Living in the Present
by mattmetzger
Summary: Ianto can't see the future, and doesn't want to see the past. Jack is obsessed with the past, but wants to offer Ianto the future. And a year in Cardiff will change them forever. AU, future Jack/Ianto.
1. Chapter 1

**Notes: this is an AU fic, set in our ordinary, alien-free (probably) world. Hopefully, this will make sense as we go along, but please feel free to ask questions. This takes characters from both Torchwood and Doctor Who, but primarily focuses on the Torchwood characters, so is staying in this fan listing.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, and I am not making any profit from this work.**

**Living in the Present**

**Chapter One**

Jack had never seen a picture of the man who was meeting him at the station, but he'd spoken to him on the phone, and he was pretty sure he would recognise, if not the voice, the words again. The man was...eccentric, perhaps. And he took going off at tangents up to the level of genuine _art_.

The train was quiet, and the sky outside was darkening. It was a two-hour trip to Cardiff from London, but it had been a late train and there apparently weren't any matches or events going on. Not that Jack would possibly be aware of that. There were maybe two other people in the carriage with him, and he hadn't so much as glimpsed a ticket inspector. He hadn't even been able to make conversation with the woman with the tea trolley, because her accent was so thick, it was incomprehensible. And it wasn't even Welsh; it was French.

Jack's colleagues had all called him crazy, but he didn't mind. He knew he was crazy. Who would give up a lucrative job like his for research? It wasn't even commissioned. If he didn't get the good research, his book would fail, and then he would be dirt-poor and crawl back to London to get another teaching post in one of those crappy inner-city comprehensives where their websites boasted that 'only _two _of our students get stabbed a week!'

He hadn't liked London all that much after he hadn't _needed _to be there, and once that obligation was gone, he had happily looked for other places to be. And he had found Cardiff.

He knew nothing about Cardiff. It was a city, and it was Welsh, and it had lots of Italians. That was all he knew about Cardiff, sitting on that train. Oh, and it was two-hour train journey from London, if you didn't stop anywhere else. A boring two-hour train journey.

But, finally, they had crossed into Wales itself, and from there it would only be a handful of minutes before Jack could get off the train, stretch his legs, and meet the man from the university. A colleague had put Jack in touch with him, saying he was brilliant at all things historical, although, as far as Jack could tell, it was a hobby. Seeing as the man was a physics lecturer at Cardiff University.

As the train swept into the lights of the city, stark against the black winter sky, Jack peered out of the window and grinned.

This was going to be fantastic.

* * *

Doctor John Smith could blend into a crowd roughly as well as Jack could. He wore glasses too big for his face, trainers with a pinstriped suit, and a long brown trenchcoat that, had it been black, could have made him look like a drug dealer.

"Mr Harkness!" he beamed, pumping Jack's hand energetically, and it was instantly apparent that he wasn't Welsh at all. "Welcome to Cardiff, Jack - I can call you Jack, right? - and it's lovely to have you here! I'm the Doctor - Doctor John Smith, that is, I'm sure Sarah-Jane told you..."

"She did," Jack said, managing to rescue his hand. "What are you a doctor _of_?"

"We-ell," Smith shrugged, shuffled his feet, and grinned again. "Technically philosophy, though I lecture in physics. My first degree was a first in Physics and Philosophy - got a Masters in that too - but then I wrote a thesis for my doctorate on the philosophies surrounding the theories of time travel. Everyone seems to think I'm a little eccentric - can't think why, but that's people for you..._anyway_, Sarah-Jane gave me strict instructions, bless her - get you to where you're staying and leave you alone until you show up at the university begging for help because you're crazy, wanting to come to Cardiff - can't say I agree..."

"You like it here, then?" Jack said, managing not to laugh. The man could speak a mile a minute, it seemed, and enjoyed it.

"Love it! Lovely place, Cardiff, full of the Welsh! Got everything, this city, you'll never want for anything at all!" Smith beamed again, and Jack wondered how it was physically possible to fit that smile on a single face.

"Right," Jack said. "Well, I'm renting a house from a friend of mine down at the bay. The Plass? Do you know the Plass?"

"Oh, the Millennium Centre, of course! Have to know that, my landlady would never forgive me," Smith grimaced. "Very into music, is my landlady. You must meet her sometime - you and she could talk for hours about how strange I am, eh? She likes that sort of talk."

"Right, so...where's your car?"

"Car? Oh no, don't have a car," Smith chuckled. "It's the train! Little park and ride trains, very nice. Or the buses, though I wouldn't in the dark these days, not with the bored teenagers you get about now. Poor kids, should start studying. Amazing world out here, amazing!"

Sarah-Jane had been right when she'd said that Dr. Smith was...an unusual man.

* * *

Jack Harkness (who liked to address himself as _Captain _Jack, despite the fact that he'd never so much as been in a cadets force, let alone the actual armed forces) was thirty-two, well-travelled, well-educated, and very restless. His mother had been American, and his father Scottish, and although Jack had been born in Glasgow, he had been raised in a household with a distinct mixture of accents.

Jack's own accent was predominantly American, as his father had died in the Falklands War when Jack had been only five years old. His father had been the source of Jack's beloved 'Captain' title. Jack had always been fiercely proud of his father, despite not really knowing or remembering the man. And raised by an American mother, Jack had grown up being teased for the way he spoke, but hadn't actually learned to speak in any other fashion.

Jack had studied History for three years at Edinburgh, before moving to London to teach in a private school. And he had hated it. Every single second of teaching ungrateful teenagers had put him off children for life, and he had sought out something else. Like research. History books, maybe.

And so a colleague in the Maths department had put him through to Doctor John Smith, and Cardiff.

Of course, nobody in London had understood. They'd all called him crazy. Why on earth would he want to leave a cushy job teaching rich kids in London (which was, of course, _the _place to be in the entire world, bar perhaps New York) for rainy, wet, pathetic, miserable, cold, windy, non-English-speaking, sheep-shagging, jumper-wearing, leek-eating Wales. Poncy red dragons and all.

"Because Wales has _history_," he'd said.

Of course, that was a losing argument. London had history - probably more recorded history than Wales and Cardiff combined. Wales had naked barbarians running around, then crazy druids, then nothing-nothing-nothing, then becoming part of England and being graciously allowed to keep its own name. And that was it.

"It's got history," Jack said. "And I'll find it. And write about it. And make millions."

That was a losing argument anyway. No historians made millions. Except the people on the telly.

But Cardiff - Cardiff was going to _make _'Captain' Jack Harkness. Whether it wanted to or not.

* * *

The house Jack had rented near the bay almost looked onto the Plass. And the Plass was kind of pretty, with the big glass tower thing in the middle. And all the bars nearby - that was _really _good, even if the local beer was disturbingly called 'Brains'. Jack decided he didn't want to discover the historical origins of that one.

The house itself was small. It served Jack's friend (a guy he'd gone to university with called James, who'd inherited it from his grandmother when she'd died and basically used it as a summer home every so often) rarely, and so smelled musty and kind of damp. It was chilly, too, and Jack discreetly bumped up the thermostat.

The garden was a box filled with weeds, but Jack decided James could sort that out for himself. A cat was nosing about in the bushes, and Jack ignored the fluffy thing. He wasn't too keen on cats. An ex-girlfriend had had a homicidal cat that had hated him, his stuff, his clothes, and even his shoes. It had died after eaten his shoelaces - _eating them! _- and his girlfriend had never forgiven him. It wasn't like he'd _fed_ them to the cat. Stupid cat got its way in the end though - she wasn't his girlfriend any more.

Ignoring the cat in the garden, he poked around in the kitchen and found that he would have to go out to get something to eat, and do some shopping tomorrow. And preferably get himself a street map of Cardiff, because he was going to get very lost if he didn't, especially in the dark. And then he would get down to finding some locals and some history. The library and maybe a tourist office would be good places to start. And he would _have _to visit the castle, because Jack never turned down a chance to visit a castle. Ever.

He unpacked hurriedly and messily, and decided to go out for fish and chips. Fish and chips was a British tradition, not just an English one, and he was sure they had to taste pretty good, being near the sea.

And tomorrow he would begin his new life.


	2. Chapter 2

****

Notes: I forgot to say this last time, so I'll say it now. I don't live in Cardiff or anywhere close; I gather my information from friends, memories of my own rare visits, and the Internet. I apologise for any inaccuracies.

**Dedication: for Storms-Are-My-Nature, for the fastest review response ever.**

**Chapter Two**

Jack met his first local face-to-face the very next morning, in the middle of the city centre, on a busy shopping street, somewhere between a fast food restaurant and a flashy women's clothing store.

Or rather, he was crashed into and his bag grabbed for.

Unfortunately for the would-be robber, Jack was a quick thinker, and had lived in Glasgow and inner London. And he had survived with none of his possessions being stolen from his person (his house was another story). Which meant that not only did he grab his bag back, but he grabbed his assailant.

"Let the fuck go of my things!" he yelled, attracting a hell of a lot of attention immediately. As crowds do, everybody formed a circle, though Jack was relieved to hear someone yelling for the police. Especially as the struggle quickly turned into a fight, once the assailant realised that Jack really had grabbed hold on purpose, and Jack found himself ready to punch the guy when he suddenly morphed into a scrawny sort of copper with a large mop of gingery blond hair.

Luckily, Jack held back on the punch.

"Right then, calm down," the copper said - and God, he really was scrawny. "What's going on?"

"Little shit tried to nick my bag," Jack snapped.

The 'little shit' in question was engaged in a losing match with another copper - a woman with dark hair who looked flaming angry. And sounded it too. Apparently Cardiff cops weren't too fussy about cursing a blue streak in front of potential criminals. The lanky one sighed on hearing Jack, and turned to his partner.

"Cuff him, Gwen. He's done it again."

Jack mentally wrote up his first email to Sarah-Jane. _Dear SJ, first day here and I'm in trouble with the cops already. Wales isn't an alien a landscape as you think, babe. Send bail - I think I punched him a few good ones._

"You're going to have come with us, sir," the lanky guy said. "Can't have fighting in the middle of the Thursday shoppers, can we? It's pension day, you see."

Whatever pension day had to do with it, Jack didn't know, but he also knew not to refuse even a lanky copper, and went with them.

The police car smelled funny too.

* * *

The station was bustling, but Jack found himself sat down in a chair after giving his statement and was passed a cup of completely crap coffee, that tasted more like the mud the coffee plant grew from than the beans that came off the coffee plant.

And what the hell was a coffee plant called, anyway?

"Sorry," the female copper said, with a sweet little smile that really was very attractive, if a little toothy for Jack's tastes. Still, the long dark hair more than made up for it. "I know a guy who does amazing coffee, but he refuses to come and work here and make it for us."

"Anything's better than this," Jack agreed, putting it aside. "Can I go yet?"

"Probably soon," the woman rolled her eyes. "That lad's always in for nickin' stuff. And he's not trying to pin you or nothing - just depends if his lawyer's got enough fight left to counter-prosecute you for socking him one."

"Is he likely to?"

"Nah, probably not," she agreed, then held out her hand. "I'm Gwen Cooper."

"Jack Harkness," he said, and gave her a handshake and a flirtatious grin.

"Watch it, handsome, I have a boyfriend," she said, but the smile she gave him in return was just a little bit saucier than the first, making Jack doubt either the existence of the boyfriend, or the seriousness of the relationship. "American, are you?"

"Half," he said. "Born in Glasgow. I've come here from London actually, doing some research."

"You're not a journalist, are you?" she asked, looking slightly put off, and he laughed.

"I wish," he said. "All that travelling. Nah, history buff."

"Not my thing," she'd shrugged. "Don't care about the past, me. Just the present and the future. Lived in Wales my whole life."

"You're from Cardiff?"

"Suppose so," she said. "Fifteen years living here, anyway. Hang on, love..."

She moved away a little to respond to the woman calling her from the desk, then returned with Jack's wallet and keys, looking apologetic.

"We have to keep the actual bag until we've prosecuted him proper and all," she said. "Sorry, but it's procedure, you know?"

"Least I get these," Jack muttered. "Can you direct me to somewhere I can get my coat fixed too? Little shit ripped a hole in the sleeve."

"Oh, no problem!" she brightened, the big smile back. "I know the perfect place, trust me. Tell you what, Andy's going off shift, so it's just me going back out on beat. I'll drop you off. Could you just sign this, though, so we can contact you to come and get your bag or anything else we'll need you for?"

"Sure," Jack said, grinned again, and filled in the form.

* * *

_Jones & Sons, Professional Tailors_

The sign was as old as the shop front, apparently, but the window was well-light and interior looked warm. As Jack stepped into the little shop that Gwen had dropped him off at, a bell above the door jangled happily, and a man appeared behind the counter, which was covered in half-measured cloths and bags of clothing.

"_Bore da_," the man greeted, then chuckled at Jack's blank look and said: "Good morning. How can I help?"

"Need my coat fixed," Jack said, shrugging it off and showing the man the rip. "Got mugged this morning and the bastard tore it."

"Simple enough," the man said.

"So are you Jones, or one of the sons?" Jack asked with a grin.

"Neither," the man said, and shook Jack's hand. "I'm Colin. The original Jones is long gone now; so are the sons. It belongs to the grandson now, I think - maybe great-grandson, not sure - but he just leaves it up to me and oversees the accounts every now and then. Don't see much of him."

"Oh, a really old business then?" Jack asked, watching Colin examine the material and scribble little notes on a pad at his elbow. "Mind you, Jones isn't really a name to pick them out, is it?"

"They were always the best in Cardiff, though," Colin shrugged. "This place is ancient. There's one in Newport too; family member still takes care of that, though. Some nephew of one of the sons. It's a complex tree."

"Family tree?"

"Yeah," Colin said. "I'm no relation whatsoever. I worked here when Dafydd Jones died, and his son basically left it up to me. He gets most of the profits, but I make a neat little nest egg myself," and he chuckled. "It's a good job."

"I'll bet," Jack agreed.

"That'll be ready in the morning," Colin said. "Would be sooner, but I've got a tuxedo to fit out for someone this afternoon so I won't have the time. Drop by about nine and it'll be done and dusted for you, okay?"

"Sure, thanks," Jack said, and wandered.

Cardiff, without a coat, was chilly in March, and he elected for doing something that involved being indoors.

* * *

When Jack finally found a decent-sized library with a history section, he promptly wished he hadn't.

He honestly wondered how everybody in London could possibly think that Wales - or Cardiff itself - had no history. The 'Welsh history' section outweighed the 'World War Two' section by four to one, and every other book in the Welsh section was imaginatively titled 'The History of Wales' with a couple of random dates attached.

It was just like his university days cramming on European history.

Eventually, he decided on a thick overview book and settled down in a nice, comfortable chair by the window with a cup of coffee from a battered-looking coffee machine in the corner and simply read.

And promptly got lost.

Because it was in Welsh. And the only Welsh Jack knew thus far was 'bore da'. And he wasn't even totally sure what that meant. For all he knew, Colin had said 'fuck you' when he'd walked in, though he had to admit it was pretty unlikely.

He put the book back, downed his coffee, and left.

Food shopping.

And then home.

* * *

A couple of days later, armed with a fixed coat and a library card, and ready to get to grips with beginning his studies of Cardiff history, Jack's ambitions were rudely interrupted by a text message.

From Gwen.

Inviting him to a concert. Of classical music. Apparently, she had gotten two free tickets from her brother and this mysterious boyfriend wasn't around to go with her, so would Jack like to go? And she had added the enticing fact that she would introduce him to said brother, who knew loads about Welsh history and would be happy to help him.

Boyfriend his arse.

But then, Jack was never one to pass up an invitation from a pretty girl.

So he said yes.

And received what, in years to come, would be easily the greatest blessing of his life.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

The concert required smart clothes (which Jack had), polite smiles (to people Jack didn't know) and allowing security people to rummage through bags and pockets (which Jack didn't like). But Gwen, done up to the nines, and looking pretty hot to boot, smiled at him (and it was a gorgeous smile, despite what he'd previously thought about her teeth) and assured him that it was worth it.

"It's not actually the orchestra," she said as they entered the theatre and found their seats, with an excellent and close view of the stage. "It's a series of solo performers and the odd duet. This one's a charity do, some children's cancer fund, which is something we should raise money for, right?"

Jack hummed an affirmative, busy examining the theatre. It was rich and well-built, and obviously designed for the middle and upper classes, with their pickier tastes. Jack was one of those people who could feel comfortable anywhere - the theatre or the pub, it didn't matter to him.

"So what does your brother play?" he asked.

"Piano," Gwen said. "He's played most of his life. I remember him practicing when I was four or five. He's two years older than me. Nothing like me, though!" she added, and giggled.

"What's he like then?" Jack asked, giving her the flirty grin again that made her blush.

"He's...quite arty, I suppose. Music and drawing and all that. But he's really quiet and serious too...I don't know, he just doesn't loosen up enough," she waved a hand dismissively. "Likes to be invisible, really. Not like me - I love the limelight!"

Jack didn't really understand how somebody who had agreed to play at a concert, and apparently had the talent to be noticed, could prefer to be invisible. Brilliant people were not invisible - end of. So what Gwen was saying didn't really make sense.

It did later.

About forty-five minutes into the concert, Gwen sat up straight in her seat and grabbed Jack's elbow as a young man in a smart, black tuxedo walked onto the stage, alone and making a beeline for the piano. He didn't even glance at the audience, almost as if he didn't realise that they were there, and she leaned close to Jack.

"That's him!" she whispered excitedly, her face lit up and grinning joyously.

He looked to be fairly tall, with a stoic expression and steady hands that ghosted over the keys before settling in their first position. His posture was as straight as a bolt, and his concentration intense. His stillness and steadiness already marked him apart from Gwen, although Jack was too far off to tell about anything else.

And then the music began, and Jack forgot entirely about the young man producing it.

* * *

Gwen took Jack to meet her brother after the concert, outside in the wind. She broke from Jack to hug the pianist, who received it with an ill grace, stiffness and unease that spoke of not enjoying being touched all that much, and glanced at Jack with a puzzled and almost suspicious frown.

"Ianto, meet Jack," Gwen said, either ignoring or not noticing the tension. "Jack, this is Ianto Jones, my older brother."

Under any other circumstances, Jack would have homed in sooner on the different names, but he didn't at the time. Mostly because he had tuned out of what Gwen was saying entirely, and was staring unabashed at Ianto.

He was...gorgeous. There was no way around that. He was a head - if that - shorter than Jack, with a wiry frame that still filled the suit with grace and poise. He was clearly graceful, just from the way he held himself, and his impassive face was shot by burning blue eyes that Jack could tell immediately hid a myriad of emotions and thoughts behind him. He knew immediately, without Gwen's input at all, that here stood a brilliant man.

And Jack's heart did something...kind of weird. And probably damn unhealthy.

"Jack Harkness," he said, shaking Ianto's hand, and thanking God that his voice came out normal. Because his libido was straining at the lead, desperately trying to make itself heard. And known. Which probably wouldn't go down too well.

"American?" Ianto asked, quirking an eyebrow, and unwittingly (perhaps) making himself a hundred times sexier.

"Half," Jack said. "Half Scottish too."

Ianto didn't say anything to that, but Gwen, apparently used to her brother's silences, filled the gap.

"Jack's come to do some history research stuff," she told Ianto eagerly, "and I said that you'd be able to help him out, right? You're into that kind of thing. And you'd know where he could get the information..."

Ianto frowned a little and said, "No I wouldn't."

"What do you do?" Jack asked. "Besides playing."

"I work for the registry offices," Ianto said blandly, but offered up nothing more.

"Ianto was always into history," Gwen said, and missed the look of irritation on Ianto's face. "He was brilliant at it at school, and..."

Ianto's expression was...interesting, to Jack. Their interaction suggested an estranged relationship that Ianto didn't want, and Gwen was trying too hard to reconstruct. He wondered if they were from a broken family and had grown apart - but then, an age gap of two years was hardly enough time for their mother or father or whoever to move along and create a new family. Not in the...what, seventies, eighties? They were both in their twenties, so that would be about right...

"Oh bugger," Gwen said as her phone went off. "And I bet that's the police!"

"Or your boyfriend?" Ianto asked, and there was a heavy hint of displeasure. Gwen frowned at him, before turning to Jack and electing to ignore the Welshman's comment.

"I'm so sorry," she said, scrolling down the text, "but I have to go. You and Ianto stay and chat! I can give you his number another time if he's awkward, okay, cos he does get that way."

Ianto snorted, rolled his eyes as Gwen pecked Jack on the cheek far too intimately considering that they had meet not even a week ago, and smoothed out his face again as his sister left them standing and staring at each other.

"Want to get a drink?" Jack asked.

"...Yeah, alright."

* * *

"So what was all that about history?" Ianto asked.

The pub was warm and fairly busy, but not enough to be loud and uncomfortable. They had found a table in the corner easily enough, and sat nursing a couple of beers (okay, a weak lager in Jack's case that was apparently incredibly amusing to Ianto, who had snorted quietly into his pint of Brains. And Jack still didn't want to know why the local booze had such a creepy name) and alternating between awkward silences and easy talk.

"I'm looking to write a book about the history of Cardiff."

"Been done," said Ianto, and Jack nodded.

"Yeah, but...personal history. Not the usual bollocks about this battle and that king and whatever decrees. More personal histories - prominent families, infrastructure..."

"Social history?"

"I suppose so, yes."

"Hm," Ianto said, and shrugged. "Not my thing, if I'm honest with you."

When the pause became a little too long, Jack flashed Ianto a charming smile that made the other man do the sexy eyebrow raising thing again, and said:

"So, Gwen said you're two years older than her, huh? What does that make you, twenty-three? Four?"

"Twenty-five," Ianto said. "Twenty-six in August."

Jack was about to say that Ianto didn't look that old, but then rethought it. Actually, in his suit, he did. Maybe even older. He looked...tired, almost. Too tired for somebody who was twenty-five years old. He looked more like Jack's ex-girlfriend-with-the-cat had looked after the stupid cat had died. Worn down and suddenly just too weary to deal with it any longer.

"So _she's _twenty-three, twenty-four," he said instead, and grinned. "Gotcha."

"What about you?" Ianto said impassively, not reacting to the flirting that was daubed on Jack's face like permanent marker pen.

"Just the wrong side of thirty," Jack grimaced. "Still, it's a nice life. I taught at a public school in London before I decided to pack it in and write the social history of Cardiff. You from Cardiff?"

"No. _Casnewydd_," Ianto said, slipping from one to the other easily. "Born and bred. Mostly."

"Why Cardiff, then?"

Ianto shrugged and said, "Family decided to move. Not my decision."

"And, er," Jack shifted, then grinned apologetically and said, "What in God's name is Cas-whatever?"

Ianto snickered and said, "Newport."

"...Newport."

"Yes."

"Cas-whatever..."

"_Casnewydd_."

"That. Is Newport?"

"Yes," Ianto said, and took another mouthful of Brains. "I would have thought somebody wanting to study the social history of South-East Wales would have known _that_."

He had Jack there, and Jack laughed, pleased with the response. So the impassive sister-hating pianist _did _have a little life in him after all.

"True. So, now you know how hopeless I am at this Welsh thing, feel like helping me out?"

"I suppose it could be interesting," Ianto allowed.

"Very. Can I have your number then?"

It sounded like a bad pick-up line, and Ianto obviously realised that, from the way his eyebrows threatened to vanish into his hair. And he didn't even have overly long hair. He finished his pint gracefully and rose to go with a smirk.

"You can always ask my sister," he said.

"Below the belt," Jack said as he followed Ianto out of the bar and into the cool night air. It was chilly, and windy, but Ianto didn't seem to notice, striding away immediately. "Hey!" Jack yelled after him.

Ianto halted, but didn't turn round.

"Love the suit, by the way."

Ianto shot Jack a look and a small smile over his shoulder, before he kept going.

Jack didn't just grin. He _grinned_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

"That's not possible," Owen said decisively, and stabbed another chip through the heart with his fork.

"It is," Ianto said wearily, toying with his own food. "I just want her to leave me alone, for God's sake."

Owen snorted, "She's _your _sister."

"I'm not that stubborn."

"Sure, sure," Owen said, and swallowed. "Still, the guy's not bad, right?"

"I don't want a goddamn relationship, Owen."

"Aren't you being a little overdramatic?"

"Look who's talking," Ianto snapped.

That was a fair point, really. Owen couldn't lecture on being dramatic: he had transferred in the middle of his medical degree from London to Cardiff in order to get away from an ex-girlfriend. And that break up hadn't even been particularly messy.

"I say go for it," Owen advised. "See how far Gwen's eyes bulge out of her head. From what you said, she wants the guy herself. Play back for once. Get her at her own game."

"I can't play that game like she can," Ianto muttered. "She wraps everyone around her fingers - always has."

Owen couldn't much comment. He knew Ianto's perspective on his younger sister, but, having only met Gwen once or twice himself, couldn't much judge her for himself. She was pretty, and feisty, and he might have liked her in the short-term, but she was also unbearably sunny and optimistic. Both Owen and Ianto knew - from experience - that optimism was a limited drug.

Owen and Ianto had met in the hospital. Owen was in his last year of his medical degree, and on an observance shift in A&E when someone had had a heart attack in the middle of the room. All the qualified doctors had rushed off to help, leaving Owen to look after Ianto, who was incredibly concussed from a fall and could barely remember his own name, never mind the details the nurse wanted for the paperwork.

Owen had liked the sarcastic bastard who'd kept telling him to eff off and call a taxi so Ianto could get home. He had a pub crawl to get to, damnit! So he'd offered to take Ianto out for their own pub crawl once Ianto was no longer completely smashed up. And ever since, they had met once a week (at least) for a couple of games of pool, a meal and several pints.

"She's a woman. They're good at it," Owen said, and Ianto chuckled.

"True enough," he said. "Is Katie good at that?"

Owen scowled, shrugged, huffed and said: "Jesus. Yes. When she wants something."

"Speaking of which, isn't it her birthday next week? You actually _got _her something?"

"Not yet," Owen grumbled. "Oi. Back to you, loveless. At least I _have _a girlfriend. And here you are, being offered an interested guy on a plate, and you're not interested!"

"It's not that," Ianto said. "It's more I don't want a relationship."

"It's not like you play the field anyway," Owen said, taking a long drink of lager that nearly drained the glass. When he was able, he added: "Did you _ever _play the field?"

Ianto grinned and said, "I was a teenager once too."

Owen laughed, "Nice! Any hot ones?"

"Ohh yeah," Ianto said, smirking. "Sarah Evans, Year Ten. Had the best legs I've ever seen. And yes, better than Katie's, Owen, so don't protest."

"Bloody hell," Owen said. "That's _nice_."

They held a silent toast to the long-gone Sarah Evans with the nice legs, and moved the conversation on to safer things.

* * *

Gwen grinned at her phone as she sent Jack's the requested number - namely Ianto's - and squealed, throwing her arms up in triumph.

"I did it!" she announced.

"Did what?"

Gwen looked up from her desk at the woman who had approached with a cup of coffee and looking beat. She was pretty and slim, and fairly new to the department, and didn't even work in anything Gwen was ever going to be involved with (hopefully) but Martha and Gwen had really clicked, from the day they'd met at the water cooler.

"I got my brother a date!" Gwen announced, and Martha choked on her coffee.

"Hey, Gwen, don't hold back," Martha said, and grinned. "You did? I didn't know your brother was single. I would have snapped him up if I'd known!"

"Ooh, I don't think you're Ianto's type," Gwen said, and giggled. "But I finally did it! He's been single for ages, and it's really sad, and I wanted him to go out a bit more but he never does, and..."

Martha got the feeling that the brother in question might not actually be too appreciative of Gwen's interference in his love life, but held her tongue. He could always say no. And once Gwen got an idea into her head, it was best to let her have her way and not question it too much.

"...so I took him to meet Ianto and I've totally set them up!"

"...Him?" Martha paused. "Wait, your brother's gay?"

"Yes. No. I don't know," Gwen shrugged. "He's had girlfriends. Bi, then. But he likes guys too. And I've tried girls and it's never worked, so I'm switching my tactics."

"...Right," Martha said. "He couldn't just like being single?"

"He's not happy. He's always miserable. And even if it doesn't work out, it gets him out of that stuffy office a bit and lets him have some fun," Gwen argued reasonably. "I just want him to _enjoy _himself a bit more. All he ever seems to do is work and go to the pub."

"So who's the, er, lucky guy?"

"Someone who's come to study Cardiff's history."

"At the university, then?"

"I don't think so. Writing a book, I think. Jack Harkness - he's really hot..."

Martha's eyes widened and she bit back a gasp. _Jack Harkness_?! Gwen had to be kidding. Jack Harkness was in Cardiff, he hadn't told her, _Sarah-Jane _hadn't told her, and he was being set up with someone who had no idea what he was like?!

Oh dear.

Oh _shit_.

"Um, got to go, Gwen," she said, hastily draining her cup. "Got to be back in the examination rooms in a couple of minutes. Blood tests will be done by now and I can't let them sit. You know what the Inspector's like about results being prompt."

Gwen rolled her eyes and smiled in female sympathy, and didn't notice Martha's alarmed retreat.

* * *

"Ianto! It's Jack here."

Ianto took the phone away from his ear, blinked at it, and returned it.

"Harkness?"

"Yep! Gwen gave me your number..."

"I guessed," Ianto said dryly. "What do you want, Jack? It's eight o'clock at night - you _can't _be wanting to do research _now_."

"Nah, just wanted to chat and set up when we _can _do some research. Why? You busy?"

Ianto thought he detected a faint hint of anxiety creep into Jack's voice, and he smirked.

"Not especially," he said. "Just me and my flat, and the joys of the evening news."

"How dull," Jack said conversationally. "No lurid fantasties in that head of yours?"

"None that you're privy to."

"Damn," Jack chuckled. "Anyway, whenever you're free is good with me. You have the career and life here, not me."

"I don't work weekends," Ianto said. "Apart from that, you're talking after work. And I work until six in the evening every night."

"You're shitting me," Jack said. "Jesus Christ, what's your job?"

"Just an office thing."

"Office things end at half four or five, not six. You're a workaholic, aren't you?"

"No," Ianto lied.

"Yes you are."

"No I'm not."

"Prove it."

"Fine, I had lunch out with my mate today."

"A lunch hour is not a..."

"More like three. I took the afternoon off."

"A workaholic took the afternoon off? This is a special friend, then?" Jack teased, but the anxiety was back.

"No, Jack. Saturday or Sunday. Which?"

"I want to go over some Welsh translation with you. Saturday?"

"Sure."

"I'll let you know a pub or something, in the centre."

"Okay."

"It's a date?"

"It's a _meeting_, Jack."

"Deal. Date."

"Meeting."

"Sheesh, fine," Jack said, mock-grumpily. "I'll let you get back to your evening news and your sordid fantasies about the weathergirl."

"I," Ianto said primly, "was fantasising about the showbiz reporter, I'll have you know."

"Ooh, with her kinky microphone."

"Very. Goodbye, Jack."

"Night, Yan."

"What?!"

Jack had already hung up. Ianto stared at the phone in his hand, before swearing and tossing it back onto the coffee table. No way was this happening. No way. It was _not _going to happen again. He would help Jack with his research, and they would go their separate ways. He wasn't letting Gwen and Owen and every bugger else in his life win.

And most of all, he wouldn't let his desires win. Not after what he'd done.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

"Jack Harkness, you _fiend_!"

Jack barely had time to turn around before a head of dark hair and dark skin was obscuring his vision and wiry arms around his neck were cutting off his air supply. For a moment, he considered screaming for help, but then the woman stepped back and his face lit up in delight.

"Martha Jones!" he exclaimed, and pulled her back for another, proper hug. "Voice of a nightingale. What are you doing here?"

"Working, in case you forgot!" Martha scolded. "God, Jack, talk about being left out! Come to Cardiff, and you and Sarah-Jane just completely neglect to _tell _me?!"

Martha had met Jack and Sarah-Jane at the school they had worked at. She had been a doctor then, and had taken up the position of resident medic at the school, because _those _children required the best. She, like Jack, hadn't particularly enjoyed working there, and the limited horizons it had given, and had moved out to join the South Wales Police Department about six months previously. And Jack, embarrassingly, had completely forgotten to tell her he was coming.

"Ah, yeah, sorry..."

"Hmph," Martha said, frowning, then smiled. "Well, you can make up for it by buying me lunch. And I want to talk to you. Why are you here?"

"Going to write a book on the personal history of Cardiff," Jack said. "Beginning to rethink it, though, too much Welsh."

Martha chuckled and nodded, "Yes, well...what does the personal history of Cardiff have to do with finding yourself conquests already?"

Her voice turned down again, getting sterner, and Jack frowned in response, reading her response correctly.

"Hey, Martha, I don't know about that..."

"Mhmm. A woman at work said she'd set you up with her brother."

"Oh, Gwen Cooper? Well...I suppose...it's not a set up, Martha, he's helping me with my research..."

"Oh, sure, Jack. Just like Miss Tyler was helping you tidy up the history cupboard?"

"Not like that!"

Martha crossed her arms, stopping them dead in the street and staring up at Jack in a way that was really quite intimidating from a woman a foot shorter than he was.

"Jack. Seriously. You're in Cardiff for what, a week? And you're already on the prowl."

"I am not! He's...okay, yes, he's very easy on the eyes. I wouldn't mind at all if he was interested. But it's research, Martha, I promise."

"When it comes to your relationships, Jack, there's not many promises that hold, are there?" Martha asked softly.

The problem was, Martha had a point. Jack had gained a reputation in London of being a serial flirter and a serious womaniser. And maniser. He had run through a string of relationships, often ending them when he got bored, and not in the gentlest way possible. There had been rumours, at the school, that it wasn't just Miss Tyler on the faculty he had slept with in his short time there. Jack had a list of exes as long as his arm, men and women, who had lasted two months at the outside and had been dropped as fast as they were picked up.

Martha felt that she had a right to be worried. Especially after what she'd heard from Gwen about her brother.

"Look, Jack, just...careful, okay? I don't mean to be cruel, but you do...take it too casually now. You're not a teenager, and neither is he."

"Ianto."

"Ianto, sorry. But...Gwen says he's not...really very average, you know? And I've seen him the odd time - never spoken, mind - and he seems a bit...cut off, I think. I don't think it's the best idea for you to get involved with him," she tried gently.

"Martha, I'm not out to get involved with him," Jack assured her. "He is very funny, and very nice, and very attractive, but he seems resistant to my charms, I'm afraid. And I want to get my book written. Without Gwen. Who is...a bit...all over me, I think."

Martha was a natural gossip, and her eyes widened.

"She has a boyfriend!"

"She said, but that's not the impression I got," Jack shrugged. "Right, are we going for this lunch, or not?"

* * *

Jack actually went to meet Ianto at work the next day, having asked about a particular family he kept finding references to, and was told to come in and Ianto could give him photocopies from the archives. As he bounced up the steps into the old building, he wondered idly whether Ianto was wearing the nice suit again, and reflected that perhaps Martha was right, and he was a serial flirt.

"Hey," he said, leaning over the reception desk and beamed at the blonde woman sat there. "I'm Captain Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones said I could pop by."

"Um, I'll have to ring him and check...you got ID?" she asked, and her Welsh accent was so unbelievably thick that Jack barely caught the words at all.

"Sure," he said, fishing out his driver's license. "That do?"

"Uh-huh. 'Kay, hang on..."

He waited, lounging against the desk and peering around the small lobby. It was dim and cool and lonely-looking. Nobody was around, and there wasn't anything enticing people to come in either. Apparently the registry offices didn't want too many visitors in and out all the time. The murmurs of the receptionist almost echoed around the room, and the high ceilings hit the sound back effortlessly.

After a while, the clack of heels sounded, and a small woman of Eastern descent appeared at the end of a long corridor.

"Mr Harkness?" she called.

"Call me Jack," he smiled winningly at her, and she flushed a little, with a small smile of her own.

"Jack," she allowed. "My name is Toshiko Sato..."

"Japanese?" he guessed.

"Yes," she said, and the smile grew a little bigger. "Ianto sent me to get you and bring down to the archives we're in at the moment. It's a big place, and easy to get lost."

"Fair enough," he said. "Lead the way, m'lady."

That resulted in a small giggle, before she turned on her heel and went back the way she came, making him follow her quietly. He observed her as they walked: she was small, slim and very pretty, but also very conventional. She looked completely normal; there was nothing outlandish about her appearance. Like Ianto, she could have blended in anywhere with the right clothes; unlike Gwen, she didn't seem to have the personality to light up a room.

She took him down two flights of stairs, down four storeys in a lift, and into was what essentially a giant basement. It was a long, wide corridor with several rooms, and they ducked into the nearest quickly. This was small, but filled with filing cabinets, with a single desk and computer by the door.

Ianto turned from one of the cabinets and tossed a brown manila folder at Jack.

"Photocopies of the family records you wanted," he said. "Nothing classified, though, I'm not putting through clearances for you."

"Why would I need those?"

"In case any of them worked for the government, especially the Ministry of Defence. They have to have clearances processed and whatever. And most of the time, there's a ten-year waiting period on them," Ianto explained. "Anything else?"

"Yeah, I need this pamphlet translated," Jack said, drawing the paper book out of his coat pocket. "History of the docks, I think."

"Yeah," Ianto said, glancing at the title. "I'll do it for Saturday. Anything else?"

"So eager to get rid of me?" Jack teased, and Tosh laughed.

"I see what you mean," she said to Ianto, who rolled his eyes and nodded.

"Ooh, gossip about me?"

"If I knew enough to gossip _about_," Ianto shrugged. "Is that all?"

"Should be, for the moment," Jack said, thumbing through the folder briefly. "Still on for Saturday, then?"

"Obviously."

"Cheers. I can find my own way back, 'Shiko," he added, winking at the young woman, who giggled and waved him off. With a theatrical bow, Jack gave them both a winning smile, and ducked out of the room.

As the door clanged shut behind him, Tosh looked up at Ianto as she sank into her chair in front of the computer and said, "He's nice. I like him."

Ianto shrugged.

"And he likes you. It's really obvious."

"Yes, thank you, I do have eyes," Ianto said.

"Don't you like him?" Tosh asked, and got her answer when Ianto went red and turned back to his filing cabinet hurriedly. "Ianto...it's been four years."

"It doesn't change it," Ianto said.

"Four years. Can't you start to...forgive yourself? It wouldn't happen again; you've learned from it."

"It was still my fault," Ianto croaked, his voice tight, and Tosh knew to back off soon. "It was my fault, Tosh. I can't disrespect her further now."

"It's not..."

"It is!"

Silence yawned, wide and long, in the little room, before Ianto shut the drawer with a slow, languid rattle, and sighed heavily.

"Want a coffee?" he asked.

"...Yes, please."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes: So sorry for the wait, guys. I had a rash of art and poetry to stumble through that seemed to take up far more time than it should have done. And British railways are awful.**

**Chapter Six**

Saturday afternoon, at around one o'clock, sees Jack and Ianto sitting opposite each other at the pub table. It's fairly quite for a Saturday afternoon, and Jack was surprised to note how much younger and less serious Ianto looked in his jeans and T-shirt - though no less tired or stiff. He gave Jack a file the moment he showed up, and made to leave, but Jack had coaxed him into a pint and some lunch - "My treat, okay?" - and a little banter.

Ianto is surprisingly responsive to banter, as if he sits around in pubs tossing mild insults and sarcastic remarks back and forth every day of his life. Maybe he does; maybe he's the not the workaholic he seems. And that little insight into the mind that lies beneath those bright blue eyes is enough to make Jack realise that he's not just interested in Ianto as a friend.

Maybe Martha had a point.

"If you're still here in the spring, that's the time to look around ruins and...why are you looking at me like that?" Ianto broke off suddenly, eyeing Jack almost suspiciously.

"Like what?"

"Like you're...undressing me with your eyes," Ianto said, narrowing his blue eyes.

"Because I'm undressing you with my eyes," Jack said.

"Stop it, then," Ianto almost snapped.

Jack got the hint from the Welshman's tone of voice, and shrugged casually. "Okay," he said. "Stop looking at me like I'm going to bite you. I'll only bite you if you ask nicely."

A tiny glimmer of a smile haunted Ianto's features for a split second, before it faded and the shutters came down with a slam. "That won't be happening."

Jack sighed heavily and said, "Let me guess. You're taken?"

Ianto looked surprised at the turn and said, "No."

"You're not gay, then."

"No."

"So you _are _gay?"

"I'm...open to suggestions."

"Ooh, bi," Jack grinned. "I like that in a man."

Ianto smirked, but hurriedly schooled his expression again.

"So what could the matter be...oh. You've just broken up with the love of your life and aren't over it yet?"

"...No..."

"Okay, you've just broken up with a complete _bastard_ who looks just like me and you're not ready for another relationship yet, is that it?"

"No."

"So he was a bastard who doesn't look like me?"

"No."

"Oh, it was a she."

"Yes."

"Ex-girlfriend!" Jack crowed. "Brilliant! Right, bad experience with a girlfriend."

"You could say that."

"But I'm not a girl."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

"Oi."

"It's not a gender-specified issue, Jack," Ianto said evenly. There was a very odd mixture of humour and tension written in the lines on his face, and Jack's curiosity went wild, keen to know about this ex-girlfriend.

"Okay. Did she kick you out of the house, then?"

"No."

"Throw something at your head?"

"No."

"Have it off with your brother?"

"I don't have a brother."

"Have it off with your _sister_?"

Ianto nearly spat out his mouthful, choked, spluttered, and finally managed a raspy, "No!"

"Say you weren't any good in the sack?"

"Jack," Ianto responded calmly and quietly. "For your information, Lisa happened to think I was brilliant in the sack. As have most of my sexual partners since I was about sixteen."

"Ooh, for real?"

"Yes. My first girlfriend was...very enthusiastic to practice all the new tricks and ideas we thought up," Ianto said. It was surprising, to Jack, how somebody talking about such lewd topics could sound like he was talking about the business sector or the weather.

"Very nice," Jack purred. "Were you married?"

"No."

"So she didn't divorce you and run off with all your stuff."

"No."

"Run off with the mailman?"

"Postman. And no."

"The milkman?"

"No."

"The landlord?"

"My landlord is an eighty-year-old woman, Jack."

"Anything's possible."

Ianto made a noise of intense displeasure, and Jack grinned broadly.

"Okay, did _you _run off with any of the afore-mentioned people?"

"No," Ianto said.

"Not even that nice Toshiko at your office?"

"Hardly. Her boyfriend would murder me. Slowly."

"She has a boyfriend?"

"Yes."

"Is he hot?"

"Don't get any ideas, he's crazy about her," Ianto said. "Name's Adam Smith. Nice bloke."

"Welsh?"

"No."

"English?"

"What is this, twenty questions? Probably. I don't know. He worked in Bristol before he moved here. I really have no real clue, Jack, I don't pry into the lives of my colleagues' boyfriends."

"You should, they might be crazy, memory-munching psychos."

"...What?"

Jack sighed, "You're not one for melodrama, are you, Ianto?"

"No, I'm not. I'm one for reality."

"Reality. Pah," Jack scoffed. "Not nearly as much fun. Tell you what would be fun, though."

"What?"

"You come out round some of these historical sites with me."

"Jack. I have work."

"That sounded like an excuse. Come on."

"Are you asking me on a date?"

"Quite possibly," Jack shrugged. "And if you're not interested, then just an outing. _Mano a mano_. Yeah? Just a bit of fun. That office is airless - no wonder you're white as a sheet."

"Jack, this is Wales. Sunshine is an alien feature here. Of course I'm white as a sheet."

"You never answered my question, Ianto."

Ianto sighed, fidgeted, sighed again, screwed up his napkin, took a large gulp of his drink, then groaned.

"I'm not looking for a relationship, Jack..."

"A bit of fun, then. Come on, show the tourist around a bit. It's lonely when you don't know anybody."

"Fine," Ianto succumbed. "But it's not a date."

"Not a date. Gotcha."

But Jack knew he had won - even if it was only a tiny victory.

* * *

"Ianto, mate, couldn't give me a bit of a helping hand, could you?"

The five-pound note dangled in front of his face caught Ianto's attention a little more than the usual plea, and he turned to eye Adam almost suspiciously, a smirk hovering.

"Let me guess. Your anniversary. Coming up. Now, did you forget, or do you have no clue?"

"No clue," Adam admitted.

Adam had been known to Ianto for just over a year and a half, when he started picking Tosh up from work. Adam, originally, had been Tosh's self-appointed guardian after a completely disastrous end to her relationship with a wildfire called Mary. Mary was beautiful, but dangerous, and her involvement with the wrong people at the wrong times had gotten Tosh into a lot more trouble than the blonde was worth.

Adam had met Tosh after the Japanese woman had been forced to move apartments, and had moved in across the landing from him. Adam Smith was one of those men who looked, and sometimes acted, like trouble incarnate, but Adam was also a sucker for a woman in trouble. A little protective instinct had turned into a relationship that was now approaching the second-year anniversary.

And frankly, Ianto had never seen Tosh happier. Or more confident with herself.

"And you want my help," Ianto surmised.

"No, I _need_ your help," Adam corrected. "Come on, Yan, just a hint? I helped you get rid of that creepy blonde bint your sister set on you, remember?"

Ianto flinched and snapped: "Don't _call _me that."

"What? Y- oh. Shit, sorry. Forgot," Adam grimaced, then waved the money inticingly again. "It'll be worth your while..."

"Are you bribing me, Adam?"

"Yes. Is it working?"

Ianto considered for a little longer, then said: "Yes, it is. But I'm going to start charging double for birthdays."

"Cheers, Ianto, you're a mate," Adam said. "Tell you what, I'll even help you get rid of the next one your sister sics on you too."

Ianto rolled his eyes, "She already has."

"Bloody hell!" Adam exclaimed.

"Hm. Not as bad as the bint - not by a long way. But...dunno, Adam. I just don't want anyone right now."

"Or ever," Adam muttered, but Ianto didn't catch it.

"I won't call in the cavalry yet, but be ready, yeah?"

"Deal, Ianto. Now: spill the beans. What does my girl really want this year?"


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

April in Cardiff was a lot more forgiving than March, if no less wet. At least the wind seemed to die down, and the sun occasionally peeked through and reminded them all that it existed up there, and Jack began to spend more time outside and exploring rather than indoors gathering facts.

Saturdays became reserved for Ianto showing him around, taking him to various historical sites he wouldn't have found on his own if he'd settled down in Cardiff for a hundred years, and giving him valuable translation work from Welsh-written documentation. Having an insider at the registry office proved invaluable over April to Jack's research, allowing him to draw out accurate family trees and begin to reconstruct a social history of Cardiff.

"I'm going to bring it forward through the last hundred years," he told Ianto over a pint one evening. "But through the eyes of the people. Sound good to you?"

Ianto had shrugged, said, "I'm not a historian," and they had left it at that.

There was another reason Jack was grateful for April. Without the wind, and when it wasn't raining, it was warm and brightly lit. He hadn't expected Wales to be remotely sunny, but it was, and it came with a brilliant benefit.

Ianto took his suit jacket off.

Ianto wore suits everywhere, it seemed. He even wore them to some of their Saturday outings, and he _certainly _wore them all the time at work. But the Cardiff sun was beginning to feel a little too warm, and he began to take them off. And the sight of that lean, trim, strong body underneath the soft cotton of the shirts was enough to give Jack trouble concentrating on those valuable historical sights. God help him when it became warm enough for Ianto to roll up his sleeves. Jack had always had a thing for a man with his shirt sleeves rolled up.

Jack had seen Ianto in jeans a grand total of once, and really didn't want to see it again. They were sinful, those things, and he'd had to go back to the museum on Monday because he hadn't taken in a single word of what was going on. He would say that Ianto hadn't noticed, but as he got to know Ianto better, he was getting the impression that Ianto noticed and knew _everything_.

But it was becoming...kind of hard, all of this.

The problem was, as they moved into spring and Jack got to know Ianto better, he grew to like Ianto better too. Not only was he insanely good-looking at all times of the day and night, who he was grew only more appealing. Even his tension around Gwen when they met her while she was out on patrol didn't put Jack off - it made him want to hug Ianto and make him say _why _Gwen put his back up so much.

He found himself becoming dangerously obsessed with the Welshman - if he told Martha, she'd call it cute, then smack him one for falling in the first place. He wouldn't be staying in Cardiff - he had a life to move on with, as did Ianto, and a fling wasn't what the Welshman would enjoy in the slightest.

Jack got the strong impression that his last go at relationships had left him badly burned. This wasn't even twice shy - it was completely put off.

And worst of all, it was sort of egging Jack on.

* * *

"Ianto?"

Owen stuck his head around the door of the storage room cautiously, in case Ianto was pissed off and hurled something at his head, but he was met with Ianto merely filing things away. His colleague (Tosh, Tash, something like that) appeared to have long gone, and the overhead lights were bright and unforgiving to Ianto's tired face and drawn expression. As both a friend and a doctor, Owen didn't particularly like what he was seeing.

"Ianto, why the fuck are you still here?" Owen groused. "You. Me. Pub. Two _hours _ago. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Hadn't finished..." Ianto began, but the files were plucked from his fingers and he was bullied out of the storage room and into the corridor before he could really formulate anything resembling a sentence.

"You are so retarded," Owen insisted, pushing him towards the stairs with an authority that defied the fact that he was substantially shorter than Ianto was. "See, this is why you need a boyfriend or a girlfriend or something. To drag you home for some light and food sometimes. Like a plant. You need watering sometimes. You're not a cactus. You're not one of those fish that lives at the bottom of the ocean, are you?"

"Owen..."

"Are you?"

"No," Ianto huffed.

"Exactly," Owen said smugly, as if he had really proved a point (though what that point _was _evaded Ianto entirely) and started herding him up said stairs. "See, it's not even genetic - your sister is a lazy _woman_, who can't be bothered to get to work on time."

"And who told you that?"

"You."

"She only has half my genes anyway."

"Fine, then it's not your mother's fault. And from what you've told me of your father, it's not him either. So it's just you. Were you dropped on your head a lot as a baby? Had traumatic babysitters? Developed serious OCD problems when you were a teenager?"

"No," Ianto groaned. "Owen, bugger off and leave me alone."

"Katie says I should invite you in for a threesome if it'll get you out of the dark, but I reckon that's a bit desperate," Owen continued obliviously.

"Oh yes," Ianto said sarcastically. "Incredibly hot and delicious as you are, Owen, I think I'll give it a miss."

"You don't know what you're missing."

"Believe me, I don't want to know. Not in your case, anyway."

"Thoughts off my girlfriend, Jones," Owen snapped, pushing him out into the lobby and straight for the doors.

"Owen, I have things to get..."

"Your keys are in your pocket and I'll buy the round. What the hell do you need to get?"

Ianto gave up on that thin hope of escape, and tried instead:

"I'll get behind on my work and..."

"You mean you'll be normal?" Owen said. "God forbid, Ianto, that you remain a human being. I think you're a robot sometimes and your 'off' switch got broken."

"I am not a robot."

"Yeah? Fooled me. That why you don't change the suits? They're really your skin? Just in different colours?" Owen probed. "You're a chameleon alien, then, I knew it."

Ianto snorted at an impressive volume and said: "Now you're being childish."

"I'm allowed," Owen said. "I've been deprived of a drinking buddy, so screw maturity. Come on, get moving."

He hauled Ianto out into the evening. It was dark, so gone half six, and cloudy, so no stars or moon to help. It was chilly, but calm, and Ianto's suit easily sufficed. Owen swore and rubbed his arms - apparently, he hadn't thought to bring a jacket and was now regretting it. Not that Ianto was going to do much (anything) to remedy the situation.

"Why are you _here_?!" Ianto finally insisted, once they were on the road to the pub.

"Because you haven't thrown yourself into work this deeply since the accident," Owen retorted. "I don't know if it's your damn sister or not and I don't bloody well care, but I'm not letting it continue."

"It wasn't..."

"It _was_ an accident," Owen said shortly. "You're backsliding again, and I'm not standing for it. Like it or not, you came this far, and you're going to bloody well stay here. Minimum."

It was about as close as Owen ever got to saying that he cared.

"...Thanks," Ianto muttered.

And that was about as close as Ianto ever got to acknowledging that he needed that sometimes.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

And in years to come, Jack would remember the date, even remember the time. He would always be able to quote that day word for bleeding word.

Whether that was a good thing or not, he really wasn't sure.

It happened on Saturday, which happened to be the first of June. The outing day with Ianto hadn't actually happened; they had found a quiet pub and sat in the beer garden with ashtrays and glasses holding down the papers, and Ianto working through kinks in Jack's research or translating bits of things for him.

It was warm, pleasant, sunny, and, although the blackbird in the tree kept singing and pissing Ianto off somewhat, Jack hadn't remember feeling _content _for a long while. It was a bit mind-blowing, actually, because although he was frequently _happy_, Jack's life just didn't allow for the smooth sailing required to achieve _content_.

They had ordered lunch - Jack couldn't get over the sheer _lack _of gastro-pubs in Cardiff, and was enjoying every available nanosecond of it - and Jack was steadily increasing the poking he was administering to Ianto's elbow.

"What?" Ianto grumbled offhandedly, flipping through a slim pamphlet Jack had picked up from somewhere, completely in Welsh. And judging by the amount of highlighter pen Ianto was using, poor Welsh.

"Eat your food," Jack said.

"It can wait until I'm done with this."

"You are seriously OCD. I'm going to go home tonight and look up OCD and its symptoms. And I'll bet you're on the website as a textbook case."

"Sure," Ianto said, not really listening.

"You're not even listening to me. Put it away and eat!" Jack insisted.

"Just until I..."

"Now!" Jack said, tugging the pamphlet away and hiding it under a book. "You ordered that, so you're going to eat it. Food is never good cold."

"Jack, it's a baguette."

"So?"

"It's not hot anyway."

"It'll go stale and the wasps'll have it. Eat it. It's not exactly like you're the Welsh Whale, you know?"

It took a moment for Ianto to comprehend that, then he groaned.

"Don't you start too," he complained. "Tosh already goes on at me about eating."

"How about you try eating?" Jack suggested.

"I do! Breakfast and dinner," Ianto said, gesticulating wildly. "But she _never _believes me! I'm just not a lunch sort of person."

Jack shrugged, took a gulp of his drink, and nodded: "I can understand that. I hate large dinners. Screw up my sleeping patterns."

"I think it's a stretch to call what I do a _sleeping pattern_," Ianto said with a wry smirk.

"Insomnia?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Ianto paused, then said: "Don't know..." and Jack didn't believe it for a second.

"Come on," he poked the available elbow again, and it jerked away in surprise. "Tell me. You _do _know."

"How would you know?"

"I'm good at telling when people are lying."

"Why?"

"I was a teacher," Jack grimaced.

"Really?"

"Yeah. One of the public schools in London."

"Oh, how _dahling_," Ianto said, affecting a surprisingly accurate upper-class Chelsea accent.

"Mm," Jack agreed. "You work for a few years with snobby teenagers who hate your subject, and you'll learn damn fast when they're lying through their eye teeth."

"You taught History, I suppose?"

"Yeah. Then I got bored, and decided to make my way in another manner."

"Must be nice to not have to worry about money."

Jack shrugged and said, "I don't know...it's mainly my inheritance from my Dad. He was a pretty well off guy. But...I'd rather have my old man than the money, you know?"

"Yeah, I know," Ianto mused.

"Your Dad still around?"

"Not anymore," Ianto said. "Died a couple years back. But I got over twenty years with him, so...yeah. It was okay. I miss him, but...it was quick."

"How did he die?" Jack asked quietly.

"Heart attack," Ianto said. "Not bad, for an eighty-something. He was forty-one when I was born."

"Late baby, huh?" Jack grinned. "Bet Gwen was even more of a surprise, then."

"You could say that," Ianto responded quietly. "I was the first baby, actually. Oldest."

"Lucky you," Jack said. "I had a brother, myself. Not a sister. Want to compare torture notes?"

Ianto laughed - genuinely laughed - and had to put his glass down to compose him a bit more. Jack beamed, pleased at getting such a happy reaction out of the stoic young man. He had a feeling their choice of conversation was putting Ianto on edge a little, and tried to ease the tension.

"Grey was three years younger than me..."

"Grey? Seriously?"

"No, but that's what we called him. Grey eyes, see."

"...You have a weird family."

"Yeah, well. He was three years younger than me, so our notes should be fairly similar."

"I don't know, dealing with a bolshy thirteen-year-old girl in the house is probably different to fighting for the remote for which football match to watch," Ianto shrugged.

"You never answered my question."

"What?" Ianto frowned.

"About insomnia."

"...What?"

"What gives you insomnia?"

"I did tell you, I don't..."

"And I told you I knew you weren't being honest there," Jack prodded, but not literally this time around. "So, why? Nightmares? Live by a main road? Noisy neighbours constantly humping in the bed that's up against the same wall as yours?"

Ianto snorted, "What, Mr Greames? I hardly think so, Jack."

"Well, why not?"

"My bed is against the wall that borders thin air."

"Well, it was a sound theory otherwise."

"And I have no neighbours. That flat's been empty for years."

"Why?"

"Electrics are crapped out and the landlord can't be bothered to fix it," Ianto said casually, finishing off his baguette and pushing the plate away. "There. Eaten. Can I go back to my reading now?"

"My reading," Jack said. "Come on, we'd better dump this all back at mine. Where after that? I want to see that Norwegian church thing - what's that all about?"

Ianto shrugged, gathering up the papers, "Don't know - never investigated it myself."

They discussed meaningless matters on the walk back - the weather, rugby, the advantages of Wales over England, the advantages of England over Wales, and what made a pint of beer absolutely perfect. Jack had to kick that curious cat that had been in his garden off the step to let the pair of them in, and Ianto had to shoo it back out when it tried to follow them.

"Are you sure that cat isn't yours?" he asked as they dumped the papers on the kitchen counter.

"Sure. Next door's, I think. I'm renting this from a friend, but he never warned me about any damn cats."

"You don't like cats?"

"No."

And then it happened, on a Saturday, on the first of June, in a sunny kitchen that Jack didn't own and to a man he didn't know much better than the house and its history with cats. But the way Ianto turned to peer out into the garden, the angle of his face and neck, and the sun upon his pale skin, just did something a bit funny to Jack's chest, and then he decided to utterly screw what Martha told him to avoid, and did it.

Without preamble, he caught Ianto's chin, turned his head, and kissed him.

And immediately realised that this was not going to be a one-time thing. Not if he had anything to say about it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

Jack pretty much always knew that he was bisexual. Right from secondary school when he was fourteen, and he found himself alternating between staring at Lucy Johnson's legs in Chemistry, and catching sneaky glances at Daniel Potter and his chest during swimming classes in the summer - he _knew_. But nevertheless, Jack had a lot more experience with women than men. He tended to piss men off a bit, really, and there was always something about him that, by contrast, the ladies find irresistable.

And kissing a man is very different to kissing a woman.

Jack has heard plenty of people say it's the same, but he's never found that, and Ianto was by no means the exception to that lifetime observation. For one thing, it would be kind of scary to kiss a man and be able to fool yourself into thinking it was a woman, or vice versa, but from that single kitchen kiss, Jack found all the differences all over again. Without tongues.

He could feel the gentle scrape along Ianto's jaw of where the razor hadn't cut quite close enough to white skin to create the smoothness Jack has to associate with women's kisses. Ianto's lips weren't cared for - cracked and dry - and the sensation was, consequently, a long way from the polished, slipping glide of a kiss with a woman. When Jack cupped a hand around the back of Ianto's neck, the muscles were taut and clear, rippling under his palm, rather than the sleek conformity of the female form. Ianto's skin wasn't smooth either, as a whole - rather, it was weatherbeaten and drier than Jack was used to. And then there was the _rest _of Ianto - their proximity wasn't that close, compared to, say, making out on your girlfriend's parents' sofa twenty minutes after the prom ended, but it was close enough. Ianto was _solid_ - firm and unyielding, and the warmth radiating off him was raw and dangerous, but alluring at the same time.

And then Ianto's hands were at Jack's shoulders and pushing back, and they broke apart. It wasn't the need for oxygen, Jack recognised that immediately, and he curled his hands to cup Ianto's elbows in a tiny act of resistance.

"...I..." Ianto croaked.

"I've been wanting to do that for a while," Jack confessed.

Ianto's face crumpled, to Jack's surprise and a tiny twinge of horror, and the Welshman backed away hesitantly. His back hit the counter, though, and he was stopped dead, and prevented from further escape by Jack bracing his arms on the tile either side of Ianto's waist and peering into his face.

"What's wrong?" he asked quietly. "You enjoyed it, I could feel that."

And he could. Ianto had kissed back almost immediately, and Jack was pretty sure he had felt Ianto's fingers at the nape of his neck at one point. He hadn't been refusing anything, until a second ago, and it had really lit a fire under Jack's libido that now needed to be quelled before he did something really stupid.

"I...I..." Ianto managed, his eloquence evaporated in the face of something Jack couldn't understand.

"Is that I'm a man? I'm sorry if that made you..." Jack began, because he'd had his fair share of those who haven't even thought about their sexuality before (including, worryingly, self-confessed lesbians) and it wouldn't surprise him.

Ianto made a noise that was a fair cross between a snort and a shaky laugh, and waved a hand dismissively, "No, I know that..."

"You're gay?"

"Bi."

"Okay," Jack said. "So what is it?"

"Have a girlfriend," Ianto blurted out, as Jack edged closer again. "Have - had. _Have_!"

"What?" Jack blinked. "Ianto, you're not making sense. Do you have a girlfriend?"

"Yes."

"So why the _had_ in there?" Jack quizzed, and Ianto shivered, his hands clutching at the counter desperately. Jack's arousal died instantly at that display of uncertainty, and worry took its place.

"Because I _should_!" he insisted, and Jack really, really wasn't following this conversation at all. He was obviously missing a huge chunk of the story here, and he wasn't entirely sure that Ianto realised, right now, that Jack wasn't psychic, and therefore had absolutely no idea what he was stammering out.

But worse, Ianto looked kind of...shocky, actually. He reminded Jack of someone who had been sharply, rudely, and unwillingly yanked out from a comfort zone that they actually _needed _rather than simply _liked_.

"Okay, calm down," he said, turning his voice low and soothing, and rubbing a hand up and down Ianto's arm. He straightened up so that they were eye-to-eye again, and turned Ianto gently towards the living room and the sofa therein. "Let's go and sit down and have this out, okay? I don't understand _what _you're talking about, but I _do _understand that something's going on."

Ianto reacted surprisingly well to that. He'd obviously been sat down for serious talks on many a sofa, and sank into the cushions as if it was a familiar scenario. Which it might well have been, but not in this house, and _definitely _not after kissing Jack in the kitchen for the first time.

"Right. Do you have a girlfriend?" Jack asked, going right for the jugular.

"I should," Ianto snapped.

"Why?"

"Because it's my fault I don't," Ianto hissed, and he was moving into a territory that Jack recognised in himself - anger, in order to ignore the pain. He suddenly had a really sick feeling about where this was going.

"Why?" he asked, softening his tone. When Ianto didn't answer, he slid an arm around his shoulders and bent closer to get a proper look at his face. "Why, Ianto? What happened?"

"She died," Ianto choked out, and clamped a large hand over his face desperately. "She died," he repeated, very muffled, "and it was all my fault. So I _can't_."

"Can't?" Jack queried, almost in a whisper, and the sick feeling was crushing his insides.

"It would be betraying her!" Ianto shouted. "She shouldn't be gone! If I hadn't been so fucking _stupid_, she would still be here, and I'm a cheating, lying bastard for doing this!"

He started to cry, then, and Jack abandoned his line of inquiry. If Ianto couldn't tell him what had happened to his girlfriend, and why it was his fault, Jack could always ask Gwen. Gwen was _bound _to know about a dead girlfriend, right? Rubbing circles into Ianto's back and letting him use Jack's shoulder and shirt to cry on, Jack bit his lip.

He _had _to believe that this was survivor's guilt, or something like that. He couldn't honestly believe that _Ianto _was at fault. People who were the cause of other people _dying _were murderers, and usually in prison. And Ianto certainly didn't seem to be keeping this a secret. He would be in _prison_. He could not _possibly _be responsible for this girlfriend dying, could he?

"I'm sure it wasn't your fault," he murmured, and Ianto's hand tightened on his back.

"How would you know?" came the croaked response, and there was the crux of it all.

"I don't _know_," Jack said quietly. "I can't know unless you tell me what happened, Ianto. But I really can't picture you being at fault for that."

"I was," Ianto whispered.

"Tell me what happened."

Ianto pulled back, scrubbing at his face with his hands angrily and shrugging off Jack's hands.

"I have to go," he muttered, getting up, but Jack yanked him right back down.

"Don't be stupid," he said briskly. "I'm not letting you go off by yourself in this state. You don't _have _to tell me, Ianto, I'll never _make _you tell me. But I think you need to get this off your chest, and come on. It's not like I'll be telling your sister what you said."

Ianto let out a wet chuckle at that.

"Cup of tea and a chat?" Jack offered.

Ianto sighed heavily, his breath hitching in the middle, and amended: "Stiff drink and a chat."

Jack wasn't sure that was too wise, but agreed anyway.

It was the chat he was more interested in.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

It took a long twenty minutes of nursing a glass of brandy - not drinking it, simply swishing it around in the glass and staring at it - before Ianto even began to talk, and when he did, it wasn't something that made much sense to Jack.

"I don't get to hold on to the things I love."

Jack frowned at him and asked, "What do you mean?"

"My girlfriend. My son. My parents. Mam especially. Gwen. I'm not allowed to keep them."

"You...lost your family?" Jack asked uncertainly, and he really didn't get that. How could Ianto have lost Gwen? Gwen was still alive and well and living in Cardiff? Ianto _couldn't _have lost her, it was just silly.

"Yeah. Mam left my father when I was nine. Took me and Gwen with her, but...I went back. I couldn't...I wasn't wanted."

Jack was not a parent, and had never even come close. But he'd seen, in his job and in his own life, mothers and their children, and he couldn't comprehend Ianto's insinuation. What mother didn't want her own child? Okay, sure, nine-year-old boys were difficult little buggers at the best of times...but Gwen would have been, what, seven? Seven-year-old girls weren't any better.

"Why not?" Jack asked.

Ianto sighed, put down the glass, and scrubbed his hands over his face.

"I told you I was a surprise baby. My parents didn't think they'd get any more - they'd been trying for a baby for years and years and nothing had happened. They pretty much settled with what they could get and put all their hopes and dreams onto me. And then when I was two, Gwen was born. And it looked like things were going to be even better, because Mam got the daughter she always wanted, and there was me. The perfect unit, you know?"

"Mm," Jack said. He knew his own mother had bemoaned the lack of a daughter sometimes - though the way Grey had preened as a teenager, Jack had sometimes _felt _like he had a little sister.

"Only...Mam had enough. She told...she told my Dad that Gwen..." Ianto struggled for a moment, then said, "wasn't his."

"Oh," Jack said.

"Yeah," Ianto said, and chuckled bitterly. "Gwen's my _half _sister. Cooper. Jones. Mam'd been having an affair for _years _with this man at work, Brian Cooper. Her _boss_, Jack. And Gwen was _his _baby."

"Your Dad left?"

"No, my _Mam _left," Ianto laughed, even more bitterly, and whispered: "My Dad was prepared to deal with that. He said the past was the past, and he'd raised Gwen as his for seven years...surely that counted for something? Only Mam said it _wasn't _the past, because Cooper was still _there_...and she wanted him, Jack. She didn't want my Dad anymore. She packed up our stuff and took us all to live with Cooper. She married him, changed her name...but I refused. And then Gwen's old man said he wasn't having an ungrateful little shit like me around if I was going to be disrespectful like that..."

"Oh, Ianto."

"So I ran away, back to my Dad. Lived above the shop, helped him out...he left it to me when he died..."

"The tailor shop? Jones and whatever?"

"Yeah."

"Small world."

"Not really," Ianto said. "But...I had to choose, Jack. I had to pick between my Mam and my Dad, and I was _nine_. I didn't know what to do! And by the time I was old enough to have handled the two separate families...it was too late. Gwen had sided with her father, and me with mine, and we just...she wasn't my little sister any more, Jack. And she still defends him to death, acts like _my Dad _didn't exist...acted like _I_ didn't, sometimes."

Jack didn't know what to say, and settled for taking Ianto's hand and gripping it firmly.

"I lost my Mam, I lost Gwen...and I loved Gwen - she was my little sister, she'd always been my little sister. I always moaned about having to take her to the shop for ice cream or letting her play on my swing in the garden, but she was _my _little sister."

Jack knew that protective loathing of an older sibling - the feeling of resentment that you had to share everything with a being younger and therefore more insignificant than yourself, but at the same time, a fierce protectiveness that you were the _only _one allowed to hate their existence. Nobody else was allowed to even _think _bad things about your baby brother or sister.

"Then she turned up years later - I was twenty, she was eighteen - and everything was wrong. She still defends _her _family, and it's like...like I was _never _there. And that hurt, and she hates my Dad for taking me away, as she puts it, and I just...sometimes, Jack, I really _hate _her for that."

Ianto took a choking breath, then snatched up the glass and downed the alcohol in one go. Jack had the sneaking suspicion that Ianto just wasn't _used _to talking about his problems. He had the air of a man who'd spilled out ages-old, very hidden secrets in a few short minutes, and wasn't totally sure over what he should be doing about this.

"And...your girlfriend?"

"Lisa."

"What?"

"That's her name. Lisa Hallett."

Jack noted the use of the present tense, and swallowed.

"Okay...Ianto, I still think you need to tell me about her, and...what happened...but I think I'm going to insist on getting you home first, alright? I can tell this is going to be difficult, and I...I want you to be somewhere you know is safe. Somewhere you can relax."

Ianto snorted, and shook his head: "No point. It's not a home, just a bloody apartment. I can't go home anymore."

"Why not?"

"I sold it."

Jack vaguely realised that Ianto must have been talking about his home with Lisa, and bit his lip.

"Okay," he said. "But in that case, you're going to be staying here for the night, you understand?"

"Why?" Ianto asked suspiciously.

Jack raised his eyebrows and said, "I am not going to get you worked up and upset, then let you out to wander Cardiff in a mood and probably do something very stupid."

Ianto sighed heavily and shook his head, saying: "I'm about four years past the stupid stage, Jack."

"Four years?"

"Lisa died five years ago."

"That would have made you twenty."

Ianto nodded, and added: "Lisa had just turned twenty. Her family hated me...God, they must hate me even more now."

"Why?" Jack murmured.

"I _killed _her!" Ianto yelled, and then, in a fit of temper, threw the glass across the room, where it shattered on the wall and sparkled to the floor in a haze of light noise. In a moment, Jack had his arms right around the younger man, tight and secure and sheltering, and Ianto's defenses crumbled, as well as his back, and he slumped into Jack's hold.

"You didn't kill her; I won't believe you killed her. You're not a murderer."

"I was a stupid fucking idiot and I killed her," Ianto whispered, then his voice cracked and he buried his head in Jack's shoulder and clung to him like a drowning man to a life raft.

Neither said anything more for some time.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

Jack's mobile rang as he was leaving the library on Monday afternoon. He wasn't in the best of moods anyway - his anxiety over Ianto, his frustration at the whole situation, and his building headache were combining to make him pretty irritable. And flicking open his phone to find the caller ID telling him it was Ianto's absentee sister didn't help matters any.

"What?" he snapped.

"...Jack?" Gwen asked hesitantly.

"Clearly," he said. "What do you want, Gwen?"

"Just a chat. Thought we could meet up for coffee or something - I have the afternoon off, and..."

"Why don't you spend your afternoon off with your family or your boyfriend or your _brother_, Gwen? Instead of strangers?" Jack demanded tensely.

There was a long, tense pause, before Gwen snapped: "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means Ianto poured his heart out to me on Saturday, and through the entire confession we had going there, not once did you turn up as a supportive figure in the story."

"What are you talking about?" Gwen asked in a scandalised tone. "Of course I support him, he's my _brother_!"

"So where were you when he needed you, because damn it, Gwen, he's needed a lot during the last five years that he's never had!" Jack exploded. "Where were you when he lost his girlfriend and his unborn _child_, Gwen?!"

"Oh for God's sake!" Gwen snapped back. "Don't you lecture me, you don't know what it was like!"

"I know how _Ianto _saw it," Jack growled, and hung up abruptly.

* * *

When Adam rolled into the office in his usual suave manner, he was surprised to have his hand seized by Tosh and be immediately dragged back out the door again. He was hauled all the way back up to the foyer and out of the door into the pathetic sunshine before Tosh stopped and allowed their usual greeting of a hug and kiss.

"What was that for?" Adam asked when they broke apart, and Tosh sighed heavily.

"Just...didn't want to upset Ianto any more," she admitted. "He got all his memories dragged up again at the weekend, and not in a good way."

"Bad memories? Of what, his crackpot excuse for a family?" Adam asked. Ianto's family made his look simple. His mother had cheated too, but it hadn't resulted in baby sisters hanging about and poking into his life. For which Adam was eternally grateful.

"Of Lisa," Tosh said, like it explained everything.

Which...it did, and it didn't. Adam knew who Lisa had been, and knew that she'd died, but he didn't know how or when or why. He didn't know of any reason for Ianto to be any more cut up about it than anybody else who'd ever lost a lover like that.

"Which is so terrible...why?"

Adam knew it sounded callous, and he probably deserved the scowl Tosh directed up at him, but that was how his brain worked sometimes. Lisa had been dead for his entire relationship with Tosh, so it wasn't like it was a recent wound for Ianto. Why was it so terrible?

"Because of how she died! I told you how Ianto feels about that!"

"No, you didn't," Adam said. "I'd remember that. If only because Ianto doesn't seem the type to have a horror-story background."

Tosh had to concede that point, but she also had to make Adam understand, and pinched his arm in punishment before saying: "Ianto thinks it's his fault she died."

"_Oh_."

"Yeah."

"...What happened?" Adam pressed.

"It was just over five years ago. She was pregnant - and I mean, ready to have the baby pregnant. She hadn't been feeling well that morning, but Ianto had his performance review that morning so he came in to work anyway. And then the hospital called that afternoon saying they had her. She'd gone into labour, only there were...complications."

"Oh shit," Adam said.

"They didn't get her to the hospital in time, and she died in theatre. The baby died the next day. And Ianto...it destroyed him, it really did," Tosh whispered. "He's not the same man. He was broken. And he was convinced - still is - that if he'd stayed home that day like she'd begged him, or even if he'd gone home right after the meeting...it would have been alright."

"Would it?"

"I don't know!" Tosh exclaimed. "I don't know, I never got the details of why it went wrong. But he lost _everything_, and he thinks it's his fault, and that all got dragged up again at the weekend..."

"Why?"

"Because...you remember Jack?"

"...Who?"

"That man who Ianto's helping with a book. Who Ianto likes."

"Oh, yeah, him. What about him?"

"He, um, made his interest known - no, not like that! Not in a bad way!" she exclaimed hurriedly, feeling him tense up at the way she put it. "No, no, he was nice about it, Ianto said. He just talked. But...he wanted to know why Ianto...well, he said _panicked_ about it. And Ianto told him and dragged it all up again."

"Well...it'll go down again, won't it? He'll push it back again. Just give him a few days, he'll be alright," Adam said. They were trite words, but he really didn't know what else to say.

"Actually," Tosh said. "I'm not so sure."

"Why?"

"That's the other reason I wanted you out."

"Gee, thanks."

She smacked his arm and he laughed, but then she got serious again.

"I didn't want to say it in his ear shot in case it upset him, but...I'm pregnant."

* * *

Ianto heaved himself off his sofa with a groan when somebody rapped on his door sharply. Inwardly cursing the God of Doors (Janus, to the Romans, but he was pretty sure Welsh didn't count as Roman) he stumbled through the hall and unlocked it, cracking it open irritably.

Only to find Jack, armed with a laptop and a six pack of beer.

"I brought peace offerings," Jack said, holding up the beer. "Can I come in? It's work-related, promise."

"...How did you find out where I live?" Ianto demanded.

"'Sato' is a nice easy name to look up in a phone book. She seemed quite happy to tell me."

"And how did you know _her _last name?"

"You told me," Jack said triumphantly. "So. Can I come in? All that field research to find you. It's a skill."

"It's a nuisance," Ianto corrected.

Jack poked the door with his foot, and Ianto gave in, opening it wider to let him pass and bolting it shut again behind him.

"Nice," Jack said appreciatively, peering into the living room on his search for the kitchen. "Never took you for the untidy sort."

Ianto shrugged and said, "Why would Tosh tell you my address?"

"Because she said if anything got back to her of bad things happening to you, she would send a hitman after me. Who's the hitman?"

"Adam," Ianto said. "And he's tougher than you, so pay attention to her."

"Will do," Jack said.

"What work do you have?"

"Nothing. I lied," Jack said. "You wouldn't have let me in otherwise."

"True, and now you can leave."

"No, Yan, hear me -"

"_Don't call me Yan_."

"Whoa, okay," Jack said, holding up his hands peaceably before dumping their contents on the kitchen counter. "I just wanted to chat. Wanted to make sure you were doing okay after Saturday."

"I'm fine," Ianto said tensely.

"I don't think you are," Jack said, "and I don't think you hated the opportunity to just tell someone how you've been feeling either. And I _really _don't think that you hated me kissing you either. You kissed me back."

Ianto said nothing.

"Look, Ianto," Jack said softly. "Five years. It's been five lonely years. Let her go, even just a little bit. You're not doing yourself any good. And from what you told me, I don't believe it was your fault."

"I _left_ her!"

"You didn't know what would happen. And you don't know that it wouldn't have happened anyway. Sometimes, it happens. Childbirth isn't a foolproof system," Jack said. "I worked with a woman who died in childbirth, years ago. Totally normal pregnancy, nothing went wrong at all, and then the labour went haywire and she died. They said later there was never anything they could do."

"I shouldn't have left her," Ianto whispered, his voice cracking.

"Maybe," Jack said. "But it doesn't mean you ever could have saved her."

Ianto froze, before scrubbing a hand over his face, and his shoulders began to shake suspiciously. Jack sighed and wrapped large hands around them, drawing Ianto in and wrapping him in a hug that pressed them together from shoulder to hip. Ianto buried his face into Jack's shoulder, and Jack was reminded forcibly of the tears and talks of Saturday night and Sunday morning.

"Let me stay here tonight," he said. "No funny business, nothing you don't want. Just a friend who wants to look after you a bit."

There was a long silence, broken only by Ianto's rather irregular breathing, before he mumbled: "Just for the hugs?"

Jack grinned and said, "Yeah, sure. Just for the hugs."

After another pause, Ianto nodded shakily and clung to Jack's torso like he couldn't support himself.

"Okay," he choked.

It was a tiny, miniscule step...but it was a start.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes: Good luck for everyone for whom the exam season has started (or is coming up soon).**

**Chapter Twelve**

Jack woke up on Ianto's sofa, with his head in a rather uncomfortable position, and peering foggily across at Ianto himself, who was sat cross-legged at the coffee table in just his pyjama bottoms, sorting through what was apparently a heap of photocopied newspaper articles on the history of Cardiff.

"Please tell me it's not some obscene time in the morning?" Jack croaked.

Ianto looked apologetic and said, "Six."

"In the _morning_."

"Yes."

Jack groaned and pulled the blanket up over his head, demanding: "What's _wrong _with you?"

"Couldn't sleep," Ianto said shortly, and Jack sighed, rolling off the sofa to sit beside him, the blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

"Tell me there's coffee," he insisted.

Ianto pointed at two mugs side-by-side on the carpet. Which kind of surprised Jack, actually; he wouldn't have pictured Ianto as the type to just plonk the cups on the floor like that. With a grateful sigh, he picked up the fuller of the two and drank deeply, hoping that the caffeine would hit him like a brick and wake him up a bit.

He took advantage of Ianto's absent shuffling of the photocopies to watch him carefully. His face was still smudgy with tears, and he was puffy-eyed. They looked pretty sore, really, and his nose was pinked from the over-use of tissues. He looked like he hadn't slept much at all, but needed more, and Jack frowned, putting the coffee down.

"Why do I get the feeling that you use work as a distraction?" he asked.

Ianto's look said it all, and that made Jack's chest hurt somewhere inside. Whenever he'd been hurt, he'd used a long walk in the cold, and the alcohol perhaps a little more than he should have done, but he got away from work at least. He'd never thought it was healthy to throw yourself into something that was supposed to be 'just a job' even more than you had to.

"You are really quite fucked up, you know that?" Jack asked conversationally. Ianto gave a hoarse chuckle as Jack slid an arm around him and pulled him in sideways for a hug. Jack was very good with hugs - he'd been raised by his mother, surrounded by a church-going neighbourhood of mostly elderly women and their zillions of grandchildren, and had gotten very accustomed to hugs as a kid. It was almost a mortal sin _not _to accept hugs with enthusiasm and grace in his neighbourhood.

Ianto, it seemed, was not so used to it, but liked it. Like every other time (roughly six) that Jack had hugged him, Ianto tensed up as he was pulled in, but relaxed once the tugging stopped and stayed there perfectly placidly. After a couple of minutes, Ianto gave a funny sigh and knocked his forehead lightly into the side of Jack's neck.

"What?" Jack said.

"Thanks," Ianto responded quietly, and Jack's arm tightened a little.

* * *

Jack banned work for the day. He made Ianto call in sick, banned the collection of anything remotely historical, and took him down to the beach on a rickety bus that had seen better days. It was a sunny day, not particularly warm, but they took off their shoes and socks anyway and walked the length of the tideline until their toes went numb.

"Why are you here?" Ianto asked as they turned to return to the road, and Jack shrugged.

"Because I like you," he said.

He had the feeling that Ianto wouldn't be satisfied with that, and sure enough:

"That's not an answer."

"It really is," said Jack evenly. "Cos it means that even if this doesn't go anywhere, I still made you feel better, even for a little bit. And that counts."

"Counts as what?"

"Being a friend. Being more. I don't know. I care. I guess that's what I mean. I care about you."

Ianto didn't anything for ages. By the time he spoke again, they had found a pub for a drink and possibly lunch, and he reached out to stop Jack paying.

"My round," he said simply.

* * *

Ianto's mobile went off in his pocket on the bus ride back into the centre of Cardiff. Ianto was dozing on Jack's shoulder, and it was getting dark outside, so Jack fished it out himself and frowned at the caller ID before flipping it open.

"Toshiko, it's Jack," he said quickly and quietly.

There was a long pause before Tosh asked, almost suspiciously, "What are you doing with Ianto's phone?"

"He's asleep," he said. "I didn't want to wake him up."

"You're at his house?"

"We're on the bus."

"...Erm...okay," Tosh said, clearly confused, then said: "Is he okay?"

"He's been better, but he's alright for now," Jack replied honestly. "I'm taking him home."

"Don't let him come in tomorrow either," Tosh commanded.

"Yes ma'am," Jack said, and got a little laugh in response. "I'll tell him to call you back later or tomorrow, if that's okay?"

"That's fine. Thanks, Jack."

There seemed to be a lot of thanks with deeper meanings going around today, Jack mused, as he slid the phone shut and slipped it back into Ianto's jacket pocket. Ianto shifted a little at the movement, but didn't move again until Jack recognised the lights of the city centre approaching and shook him awake.

Well.

Mostly awake, anyway.

Ianto wasn't a particularly alert man when half-asleep and Jack supported him bodily most of the way back to his home. A passing pair of coppers - luckily, neither was recognisable to Jack - grinned at them and one called, "Had a bit much, has he?"

Jack _felt _like saying 'I wish' but simply grinned back and carried on. When he poked Ianto into enough alertness to unlock the doors, he came in as well and steered the younger man to his sofa with almost practiced ease.

"You're staying again?" Ianto queried, blinking up at him.

"I'd like to," Jack agreed, shedding his coat onto the back of the sofa and making sure the front door was locked properly. "Unless you have any particular objections?"

Ianto didn't have any objections - as Jack found out when he turned from the door and found himself lip-to-lip with the younger man.

And the second kiss was even better than the first.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes: Sorry for the wait, but I've not been feeling brilliant. Thanks to Healthy Obsession for her 'Snapshots' review that made me realise I'd better do some updates.**

**Chapter Thirteen**

Owen dropped into the seat opposite Ianto and grinned at the waiting pint gratefully.

"Cheers," he said.

"You look happy," Ianto said, a little warily, and Owen snorted.

"Katie and I _finally _chose a date for the wedding," he said. "And celebrated this morning with the best sex I've had in weeks."

"Thanks," Ianto said dryly. "I really needed to imagine the pair of you starkers and going at it like rabbits."

"Not my fault you have such an imagination," Owen said breezily. "Anyway, you know you'd like to see me with my kit off. And speaking of weddings, if you even so much as think about not being able to get the couple of days off in the middle of September, I will personally come over to that office and kneecap both you and your boss. You'll perform your duties in a wheelchair if need be."

"Yes, sir," Ianto responded, snorting, then said: "Middle of September, then?"

"Fifteenth and sixteenth. We're going to book a load of rooms in a hotel. Honeymoon's starting on the afternoon of the sixteenth."

"Australia, right?"

"Probably. Haven't booked _that _yet," Owen said, and shuddered. "She'll make me go out into the bloody countryside, I _know _she will."

"Ianto!"

A heavy hand landed between Ianto's shoulders, and he twisted to stare at Adam in mild disbelief. The man was beaming rather uncharacteristically, and waving a twenty at Ianto.

"Can I get you two another round?" he said. "I'm celebrating!"

"Celebrating what?" Owen said. "And who are you?"

"Boyfriend of a colleague," Ianto said.

"Jesus," Owen wrinkled his nose. "Your social circle is fucking _weird_, Jones."

"Is that a yes?" Adam said, the grin still present.

"Yeah, go on then," Ianto said. He frowned after Adam as the man retreated to the bar, and said: "Wonder what's got him so happy. Tosh seemed normal."

"Tosh?"

"The colleague."

"..._Tosh_?"

"Toshiko. She's Japanese."

"Oh," Owen said, shrugged, and said: "Your social circle is still weird."

"Yeah, well."

"He's a weird man," Adam said on his return, doling out pints and sinking into the chair next to Ianto. He stretched a hand over the table to shake Owen's and said: "Adam Smith."

"Owen Harper," Owen responded. "Doctor," he added, as an afterthought, and Adam crowed.

"You hang around with smart people, Ianto?" he asked.

"Wish I didn't," Ianto said flatly. "What are you celebrating, Adam?"

"Tosh and me are gonna have a baby," Adam beamed.

Owen caught the look flickering on Ianto's face and hurriedly decided to take control of the situation before it could go wrong, saying: "Isn't that 'game over' time?"

Adam laughed, "Nah, I always wanted to be a father one day."

"Hoping for a boy or a girl?"

"Who cares?" Adam shrugged. "Ideally, at least one of each one day, but I don't care which is first. Long as it's not last, right?"

Owen shrugged and said, "My girlfriend's thinking about sprogs herself. She's picking out their names already. I think I'm going to have to save any future kid from being beaten up at school, looking at her choices..."

Adam laughed and sympathised, saying it was worse with a girlfriend who was Japanese and whose idea of 'normal' names differed wildly from your own. Owen wasn't sure whether Adam knew to leave Ianto alone at this point, or whether he didn't know Ianto particularly well and just thought it was something he didn't have any experience in.

As they pushed the conversation through baby names into 'the-most-embarrassing-name-you've-ever-heard', which included a few suggestions that Owen didn't really believe Adam over, the tension began to relax from Ianto's shoulders.

"So what about you and this foreign boyfriend?" Adam asked, eventually changing the subject and looking to Ianto expectantly. "You actually hooked up yet, or not? Cos if you don't, Tosh is going to start writing a soap opera about you two."

Owen snorted and laughed: "The Scottish-American Londoner?"

"That's the bloke," Adam said. "Why's he here again, Ianto?"

"Historical research," Ianto said.

"And he's come from London," Adam added. "Weird bloke. Still, you hooked up yet?"

"Yes. No. Dunno," Ianto said, and drained his glass.

"No need to drink yourself under the table," Owen commented lightly. "But hurry up and get it together, will you? Not like it has to be serious - he'll bugger off back to London soon enough."

* * *

They left the pub at just gone six in the evening, well over four hours since Adam had peeled the first twenty from his wallet. Now, they were all more than a little tipsy, and Owen hailed a taxi with a gesture that almost ended up with him flat on his face on the pavement.

"Idiot," Ianto said, and laughed.

The cabbie hadn't looked too delighted at the prospect of the three of them, but Ianto didn't care by that point. He was dropped off first, and Adam waved away his money with the confident assertion that he'd get it, even though Ianto wasn't totally sure he had any more money to pay the cabbie with later anyway.

He was only halfway to his door when he saw Jack, sitting on the step outside, and he laughed, an easy smile blooming on his face.

"What you doing?" he asked of Jack, who looked a little surprised, and chuckled.

"Waiting for you. Been celebrating down the local?" he teased as Ianto rummaged for his keys.

"Uh-huh," Ianto said. "Adam came. Says he was celebrating, cos Tosh is pr...Tosh is p...Tosh is having a thing."

"A what?" Jack asked blankly.

"Y'know, a thing," Ianto said, frowned, and found the word. "Baby."

"I see," Jack said, not really seeing at all, but he let it go as Ianto let them in and up into the tiny flat. He was surprisingly steady on his feet, but was obviously well into 'drunk' territory for the complete absence of the tight lines in his face or the worry and anxiety constantly clouding his voice.

And Jack kind of liked it.

"And Owen and Katie are getting married in middle of September," Ianto was saying as he let them into the flat and shut the door behind Jack, almost as if the pair of them walking into the flat was an ordinary event. "And all through that I just wanted to kiss you."

"What?" said Jack.

"This," Ianto responded, and kissed Jack hard enough to press him up against the wall and deprive him of oxygen.

And for a breathless, excited moment, all the other shit in both their lives vanished.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes: I didn't realise how brain-consuming all the snapshots are. I'm leaving on Sunday for a two-week tour, so I thought I had better update this before I get lynched for the ridiculous delay.**

**Chapter Fourteen**

By late August, Jack came to the slow realisation that he was screwed.

Somewhere along the line, and he wasn't sure where or how or if it was particularly sensible, he'd formed what could loosely be called a relationship with Ianto. He wasn't entirely what it was either, to be honest: they kissed, but it was hard and demanding rather than loving; they had, by this point, slept together, but it was out of lust more than anything else; they had explored each other physically, but there seemed to be a hands off policy in public.

This was nothing new for Jack. He'd had many flings before, many illicit little relationships that should never have existed, and he'd enjoyed every last minute of them. It shouldn't jar him so badly to have the same thing with Ianto, and that's why he was screwed.

Because he wanted more.

For all his loving, open nature, Jack didn't fall _in _love often. He loved, but was never in love. He cared, but could always walk away. He enjoyed himself, and made his partner feel good, and then he was gone again, moving on through life as if time didn't affect him in the slightest. He was the wrong side of thirty and still hadn't touched a relationship that had lasted half a year.

And now, suddenly, he found himself squirmed into the reclusive life of a shattered Welshman who had never before, to Jack's knowledge, had experience with a man. He found himself trying his hardest to impress, to please, to help and to love, without crossing those delicate lines that Ianto seemed to have drawn in the proverbial sand.

He didn't know what to do.

If he followed his own advice to others in the past, it was, in theory, easy. Stick around, have fun, and wait for the other shoe to drop. There would probably be some horrific secret, or some other player in the game, and everything would come crashing down, or you would lose them, or _something_. Love wasn't one of those forever things, not for anybody.

But now, here, in a technically foreign city with a technically foreign man, Jack was beginning to see why people had stopped coming to him for advice.

He didn't _want _the other shoe to drop.

He wanted everything.

* * *

In early September, Jack began to assemble his book on the social, personal history of Caerdydd, Cymru. He had even used Welsh place names, those he could find, in some tiny tribute to those who had helped him. And he had never envisaged himself doing that when he came here.

Since March, Jack had realised that the Londoners were wrong. Wales was washed with history just as much - if not more so - than London was, and he had only scratched the surface. He could stay in Cardiff forever and write and rewrite their definitive history.

But he couldn't.

He couldn't settle yet. There was a world to see, in which everything was changing, and Cardiff was not the be-all, end-all of that world.

But as he began to piece together his volume, he realised that he would not still be come the New Year.

* * *

"Tell me about you," Jack said.

It was late at night, and they were sprawled into Ianto's bed. They didn't cuddle much - Jack would collapse beside Ianto in the afterglow and watch, rather than curl up and cuddle. Jack kind of missed that. He'd always been a fan of the post-coital cuddle.

"What?" Ianto asked, his eyes flickering back up to something near wakefulness.

"Tell me about you," Jack said.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Favourite colour?"

"Blue. Yours?"

"Red," Jack said, and grinned. "It's your colour. I bet it is."

Ianto shrugged a little, then said: "So I'm told."

"By whom?"

"...Lisa. Gwen. Bronwen, the odd time, but I don't trust her opinion."

"Who's Bronwen?" Jack probed.

"First girlfriend," Ianto said. "We were fourteen. She kissed me behind the bike sheds at school. I punched Peter Davies for her, and bought her a two quid necklace for her fifteenth."

"A whirlwind romance?"

Ianto looked at Jack very seriously and said, "I shared my ham sandwiches with her at lunchtime, Jack."

"True love," Jack sighed melodramatically, and they both laughed.

It surprised and pleased Jack, when Ianto relaxed with him so much. He remembered that uptight young man in the black suit at the concert; he remembered the guarded flickers and the distasteful glare he had directed at his sister. Back then, he wouldn't have imagined the same man lying ruffled and rumpled in his bed and laughing.

He was beautiful when he laughed.

"I'm not beautiful."

Jack blinked when he realised he'd been talking out loud, and grinned: "Yeah you are. You're gorgeous."

Ianto scowled and threw back, petulantly, "Not."

"Are."

"Not."

"Are too," Jack argued. "You're gorgeous and beautiful and everything else that you'd hit me for cos it's too effeminate."

He kissed away the crinkles at the corners of Ianto's eyes, and settled his head there on the pillow, his breath ruffling Ianto's hair - curling from the loss of its gel - and his hand settled on Ianto's shoulder, his arm crossing that pale chest. The silence let him believe, just for a moment, that this wasn't just sex. Or pretend.

"You're the first man."

"What?" Jack asked.

"You're the first man I've ever...I'm not interested in men. Wasn't. I was straight until you."

"You wouldn't believe how many times I've heard that."

Jack could almost feel the eye-roll that he knew was happening. Could almost feel it, through Ianto's skull and jaw, pressed against his cranium and forehead.

"Yeah, well. You're a player."

"So callous," Jack said, but something twinged. He couldn't deny being a player - it was written all over him - but he also didn't want Ianto to know that. He didn't want Ianto to see what he was.

"It's true. You'll go back to London, and you'll forget me."

"No I won't," Jack denied. "I'll never forget you."

Ianto didn't say anything for the longest time. All the noise in the room was the traffic passing by in the road below, and the deep rush and cry of the air moving in and out of their chests, out of sync and out of rhythm.

"Don't forget about me," Ianto said, then he turned off the lamp, and the room was plunged into darkness.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes: Another chapter quickly, as apology for the delays. It was supposed to go up last night, but I managed the best case of falling asleep on the sofa in years.**

**Chapter Fifteen**

Sitting at one of the many now crooked tables, at half past midnight, Ianto knew he wouldn't have missed this for the world. Owen and Katie had gotten married that afternoon, and the after-party wasn't even beginning to wind down. Everyone seemed to be living up the chance to see Owen in a penguin suit, Ianto included. For being a doctor, Owen was almost the scruffiest man that Ianto had ever met.

That dubious honour actually went to Adam, but never mind.

Ianto was kind of disturbed to note, during the reception, that he missed Jack a bit. He would be making silly jokes about what the women were wearing, and checking out the bridesmaids, and coercing Ianto into dancing. He was a flirt, Jack, but he was a funny one. He made Ianto laugh, and Ianto didn't feel much like laughing. He felt bored, and wallflowery, and he wasn't one for posh parties. And it was a wedding: unless there was an enormous extended family involved, weddings were always posh and boring.

Ianto eventually befriended a young woman called Suzie Costello that Owen had known at medical school, and who apparently now did 'freaky research into freaky things because Suzie enjoys killing stuff'. Suzie translated that into medical testing on animals, and had given Owen the finger. She had then sat Ianto down and proceeded to swap dirt with him on the scruffy arsehole that was Owen Harper.

"I never thought Owen would get married, though. Thought he was joking until I got the fancy invite in the mail," Suzie said, frowning over at the dancing bride and groom in almost confusion. "He was a right player until he met Katie."

"Yeah?" Ianto said. "He talks a lot but he's all mouth."

"Not then," Suzie said. "All over the place, trust me. I was his girlfriend for a bit."

"Who broke it off?" Ianto asked suspiciously.

"Me," Suzie said, confirming that idea. "Wasn't really interested. Still not. Not a people person."

"Could have fooled me," Ianto shrugged.

"Come on, you're not exactly sociable. What do you do at work? Made the tea, stay out of the way? You'll make a good butler, especially in that suit."

Ianto raised an eyebrow and said, "I work for the registry office."

"Paper pusher."

"Yeah."

"And how did you meet La Arsehole Grande?"

"Accident and Emergency."

"Fair enough," Suzie said. "And you got a boyfriend?"

"Excuse me?!"

"You got a boyfriend? You seem gay."

"Cheers," Ianto said sourly. "I wasn't until a few months ago, you know."

"So you do."

"Sort of."

"You have or you haven't."

"No, this is definitely a sort of," Ianto corrected. "I don't want he feels, I don't know what I want, and I'm not really after a relationship."

"Sort of?" Suzie snorted. "Keep telling yourself that."

Ianto narrowed his eyes at her, before accusing: "Owen put you up to this."

"Yes, he did."

There was a long pause, before Ianto sighed and drained his pint glass. "My round. No point trying to put him off pushing me into things."

"Now you're talking sense."

* * *

Some hours earlier, Jack had had a very similar conversation with Martha on the phone, riddled with disbelief and mild accusations, and it left Jack kind of resentful of her opinion of him.

"Jack, give up," Martha had said. "There is no way you're convincing me that you're actually _in love_. Unless you get married or something, but I wouldn't even put that past you."

"Oi," Jack protested. "I think I really am, Martha. He's not like the rest."

"The millions."

"I have not had millions."

"If you lived to be four hundred, Jack, you would reach a million. One million different people. Wasn't that your goal once?" she teased.

"I was drunk!" Jack defended himself. He had been. _Very _drunk. On several tequila shots, four vodka and cranberries, six pints of foaming Dutch lager, and some awful concoction called 'Bishop's Finger', for probably very disturbing reasons.

"Drinking lowers the inhibitions," Martha pointed out.

"Shut it," Jack warned. "Look, I'm serious. _Serious_, Martha. I love him. I really, really...like, forevering."

"Forever is not a verb."

"Whatever," Jack dismissed it. "I want to stay here with him and say fuck my career. I want to...want to get him to believe me. He keeps saying he isn't ready for a relationship, but he's just scared, and..."

"_Jack_," Martha said. "Stop it. Stop _pushing_. You break hearts everywhere, Jack, it's what you do. Don't mess Ianto up more than he already is."

"I _won't_. I want to _help_ him, I want to..."

"Jack," she softened her tone. "I know you do. I know you do. You're a good man, you're such a kind, sweet man, even if you are a bit of an arse at times, and I know you don't mean to be an arse, but...face it, Jack. Your idea of helping is a quick fly-by-night relationship and then you're off again. You're such a romantic that you _forget_ that other people aren't _like _that. They're not like you."

"_This_ isn't like me, not _this_," Jack insisted, wounded at her words. "I want _more _than a relationship behind closed doors, than a quick shag. I want everything, Martha, with him. I love him. I do."

"Sure, Jack. And give it six months, and you'll fall out of love again," Martha sighed, "and then it'll be like Ianto never existed to you. Only, for him, there isn't that get-out clause is there? From what Gwen's told me, when that man falls, he does it very hard and very fast and you're setting out to break his heart, Jack. Don't do it."

Jack hung up on her then.

He'd call her in the morning, and apologise, and admit that right then he'd been an arse, but he was hurt.

He was in love, and nobody seemed to want to believe him.

Least of all the one that _needed _to believe him.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes: And here we go. My life is still in upheaval, but I'm not fond of leaving WIPs too long so I crawled out of bed and got on the computer. For those who don't know, I moved house/life/job/habits this month and threw everything up in the air, hence the appalling delay. Sorry, guys.**

* * *

**Chapter Sixteen**

Jack first said the words in early October, as the crappy weather was moving towards shitty weather, and the wind that scraped the bay became more harsh than refreshing. He said them leaving Ianto's house after one of their 'nights', as Ianto referred to them, and got a bemused look in return.

He said them again a week later, after getting the latest batch of translations from Ianto. And okay, maybe that time would not have been considered a confession by anybody's standards, but he was still a bit put out that Ianto didn't even seem to hear it.

By the end of October, Jack was saying them, both casually and seriously, almost every day, and Ianto still hadn't responded.

"You never say anything," Jack eventually said, frustrated and a little upset, as November approached. "Why don't you say anything? Even if it's a fuck off?"

"Didn't think it really mattered," Ianto shrugged one shoulder, slightly bemused. "After all, you'll be gone soon, and then it won't have mattered anyway."

"It does matter," Jack said. "Are you missing something? _I love you_. That means it's always going to matter."

Ianto snorted.

Jack could understand that reaction from, say, Martha. Or an old flame who knew his lotharian history. But Ianto wasn't aware of that background, so why was he so sceptical?

"Why don't you believe me?"

"Because," Ianto said, "you have your career and your life and this is just a little fling in your background that you'll most likely forget about one day. You'll move on, to other historical sites, and meet other, more interesting people, and there won't be the time or the will for me any more."

"There'll always be the will for you," Jack insisted.

"You'll leave anyway."

"So come with me."

Ianto looked startled. He looked honestly startled, as if the idea had never occurred to him.

"I can't do that."

"Why not?"

There was a long pause, before Ianto replied: "I belong here."

"Funny," Jack said, "because I don't believe you, and I don't think that you do either."

"Why would I...?"

"Because I love you," Jack reiterated, "and I think maybe you love me, too."

* * *

Jack sent the manuscript off to a university publisher in the middle of November.

Cardiff was foul in the run up to Christmas, he learned, and he donned his heavy coat again that had sat in the back of the wardrobe for a while now. Even Ianto, seemingly unperturbed by the weather, was wearing thick suit jackets and gloves, and, on one memorable occasion, a proper coat. Although the Welsh were subtly more underdressed than the English or foreign inhabitants of the city, it was still clear that this winter was a particularly ill-tempered one.

Which matched Jack's situation.

From his viewpoint, Ianto's life seemed to be stagnant. He hadn't - and, seemingly, couldn't - move on while Lisa's memory haunted him here. His friends and colleagues - Owen, Tosh, Adam - were all moving on with their own lives. From the little contact Jack had with Gwen, it was clear that she, too, had her own life to lead and wasn't interested or even capable of hanging back with Ianto until he sorted things out.

Jack knew, somehow, that if he left Ianto here, it would be a life wasted.

And yet, Jack was no more capable of putting his life on hold than Gwen was. If he stopped living to stay here with Ianto, he knew it would have the worst possible outcome. He would end up resenting the man for the loss of his academic career, for the loss of his research and knowledge, and they would fight and hate and everything would break down, and Martha's terrible prediction would come true.

But if he left, it would come true anyway.

* * *

And the end came around, just before Christmas. Jack's book had been accepted, he was booked to speak at a conference in Rome on lesser known histories, and he now had to move on and start fresh somewhere else if he was to keep up his slowly blooming success.

"You need to go," Ianto told him, their last night together, curled in Ianto's bed, the sweat cooling on their skin. "You need to get on with your life."

"So do you," Jack breathed.

"I don't think I can anymore, Jack."

"Come with me."

Ianto didn't say anything, averting his eyes and releasing his breath in a defeated sigh.

"Come with me," Jack insisted. "Get out of Cardiff, away from Newport, out of Wales. I'm thinking of going to France next, to the villages that bordered the Spanish in the early modern period...a whole new place. Come with me, help me."

"I'm not a historian."

"They're my books. I don't care. And I want you there."

"I don't think I _can_," Ianto insisted.

They locked eyes, blue on blue, equally sharp and enigmatic. The barriers that Jack had noticed, all those months ago outside a concert hall, were still there, but somehow subtly changed. He couldn't pin the change, but he knew that pushing would only make them stronger, and he realised that either way, a heart was going to be broken tonight.

"If you ever," he whispered, "change your mind, then..."

"Thank you," Ianto said.

* * *

Ianto saw him off at the train station, with a wave and a sad smile and one last brief kiss.

"I love you," Jack said one more time.

"I know," Ianto said.

"I always will."

"Perhaps."

"I _will_," Jack insisted. "And...my door is always open, okay?"

"Okay."

The train doors slid shut, and Ianto, Cardiff, Wales, slowly faded away.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes: And this is it. Thanks to everyone who reviewed, commented, criticised, favourited, alerted, messaged me, rec'd the story, whatever. The feedback was much appreciated, and I really enjoyed writing this out for you all.**

* * *

**Chapter Seventeen**

London was too loud, too noisy, too hurried for Jack now. Something inside him had shifted, and he no longer liked its impersonal rush. Something was gone.

Hell, not even something.

He'd been back in London for three weeks, and was still having difficulty selecting where he would like to go next. He still wanted to do unexplored histories, but without Ianto's dry wit and small smiles, it didn't have the appeal. Something inside him cried to go back to Cardiff.

"You'll have to get moving, you know," Sarah-Jane told him, "if you want to further this academic career."

"I know," Jack had said, and bypassed the topic.

He had the money to spare, and in theory the time, but he felt run down and unenthusiastic. Very much as though he'd been dumped for someone better.

Maybe he had been.

Gwen wasn't helping. She called after he had moved back to London for a chat, and Jack had steered the conversation over to her brother.

"Ianto? Oh, he's fine," she said. "Well, as much as he ever tells me. He seems fine. He's got a concert in London coming up, actually; shall I get you tickets?"

"...Could you?" Jack asked hesitantly.

"Sure. You and a friend?"

"...No. Just me."

Jack wasn't sure why he wanted to torture himself at a concert, watching someone who didn't seem to be reacting to their separation at all adversely. If anything, Ianto had moved on, and Jack was stuck.

And he was so much in love that he couldn't even dislike or hate Ianto for it.

Setting the phone down that night, Jack decided to go to the concert, to see him one last time, and then let go. Clearly, things had not been the same for Ianto as they had been for him.

This was, for Jack, the final blow of the axe. He had hoped, sickly, that when Ianto had refused to leave Cardiff with him, he would return to London to find that it was, after all, merely an infatuation. A fling, as Ianto had suggested. That, alone in Wales with nobody else to really turn to, he had formed a temporary attachment and it wasn't as meaningful to him without that slightly lonely situation.

But the empty nights, the waking in a single bed, the time he turned to tell Ianto something and didn't find him there...

It was almost as if the younger man had died.

Worse, Ianto didn't call. A couple of emails, cursory and polite - nothing more - found their way into Jack's inbox, but there was no phone call. Jack phoned, nearly every evening, but Ianto sounded harried and a little upset.

And Jack ached that he couldn't push that upset away.

"I miss you," he told Ianto, three weeks to the day after leaving Cardiff.

"Really?" Ianto had said. "Oh."

"I love you."

"I...oh."

So Jack would go to this concert, for one last glance, and hope that he could leave it all behind.

* * *

Rubinstein.

The name, Jack assumed, meant something to music aficionados, but nothing to him. He didn't even listen to the music, engrossed instead in the pianist himself, with the cruel knowledge of what else those dextrous fingers could do and had chosen not to do. Cliché as it was, Ianto could play Jack like an instrument, but now, it seemed, he had put down one instrument in favour of returning to his beloved piano.

And there he was, under a spotlight on an empty stage, playing music Jack didn't hear to an audience that Ianto didn't know. And just like before, on that Welsh evening, Ianto remained blissfully oblivious to his observers, and as stiff-backed as the masters of old.

And how Jack loved the man beneath the gleaming suit and behind the excellent poker face.

* * *

"Jack?"

The voice on the other end of the phone made Jack's heart swell and burst. The concert was over, and he was heading home, bereft and lost, and then that familiar ringtone he'd assigned to Ianto's number had finally, finally trilled.

"Yeah, Yan, hey," Jack murmured. "Hey. Um. Great performance tonight."

"...What?"

"I was at the concert."

"You...were?"

"Yeah. Gwen got me a ticket."

Ianto paused, then: "Interfering..."

"...little sisters," Jack finished, and chuckled. "You on your way back now?"

"...No. I'm...not going back yet," Ianto said slowly.

"Come out with me, then?" Jack bargained hurriedly. "Please? Where are you staying?"

"Just a bed and breakfast place," Ianto said. "I'm...I'm still at the concert hall."

Jack abruptly turned on his heel, "Where, specifically?"

"Stage entrance."

"Stay there, I'll come to you. I'm not far off. You want to go and get dinner, maybe? I really have missed you."

Jack was well aware that he looked and sounded desperate: he was near-running, retracing his route hurriedly in the darkening streets, and somehow afraid to let Ianto off the phone.

"That's..." Ianto began, but he didn't seem to know the words, and fell silent.

Jack turned the corner back onto the street and ran the last fifty yards, hanging up and turning into the alley where the stage entrance was in the same fluid movement.

And God, after only three weeks, he shouldn't have felt fluttery at seeing him again. And why had he expected Ianto's looks to have changed? God, he hadn't changed: he was exactly the same man that Jack had left behind. A suit and tie, neat shoes, and that battered backpack that Jack was so, so used to.

Jack grinned.

"Hello, you," he said.

"Hi," Ianto said, and returned a small smile.

Jack slid his arms around Ianto's waist, loving the familiar contours, and beamed.

"How long do I have you for?" he asked. "Do you need to leave early, or...?"

"Depends," Ianto said.

"On what?"

"On whether your door's still open."

Jack blinked. Ianto's face was locked in that tiny, patient smile, and his gaze was clear and steady and _sure_. Something that Jack wasn't totally accustomed to seeing on the young man's face.

"It's...always open," he said after a long moment.

"Then I guess you have me for a fair while," Ianto said evenly.

"How long?" Jack insisted.

"Long as you want," Ianto suddenly flushed and ducked his head. "I sold off my stuff. Just me and my backpack now."

"That's okay," Jack said, his voice quavering. "I have stuff."

There wasn't really a passionate kiss, and it wasn't raining like dramatic films, and there hadn't been any declarations of love, but crushing Ianto to him in a fierce embrace, Jack was pretty sure that there should at least be some cheesy background music or something. And Ianto's arms around him were equally tight, equally certain, and Jack's heart was buckling under the strain of it all.

"I love you," he said again.

"Me too," Ianto said.

So it wasn't romantic. So it wasn't what Jack had imagined. But hell, it was perfect anyway, and he knew his grin, when he eventually pulled back, was ridiculously wide.

"So," he said, "next trip. France or Germany?"

"I don't speak German," Ianto said flatly. "And I was actually thinking in the more immediate future. Like, pub?"

"Pub first. Then France."

"Deal."

Their hands slotted together like pieces of a jigsaw, and something intangible was mended.

**END**


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